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Month: July 2011

Poetics/Spirituality

Scattered bones

Posted on July 31, 2011 by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth (Psalm 141.7) When the poplar is burl free, you can sig...

Christianity/Religion/Spirituality

Righteousness and peace kiss each other

Posted on July 26, 2011 by stephen t berg / 6 Comments

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from he...

Environment/Nature/Poetics/Spirituality

Occurrence report from the mixed woods

Posted on July 20, 2011 by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

I can light a Red Bird match on the back of this netbook, hold it to the Monte Cristo in my teeth while reading Bronwen Wallace’s poetry, sit semi-clothed...

Nature/Poetics

Sky Eagle & Sweet Peas

Posted on July 18, 2011 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Two poems (and pictures) by Wendy Morton.  Thank you Wendy! SKY EAGLE You fly, with sunset wings, over the lemon balm, over the mint and oregano, over the ...

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Over the coming months, I’ll be slowly retiring Grow Mercy. This Easter marks 20 years and some 1500 posts. (And here, a deep bow to you, for reading and/or responding.) I’ll not, however, be retiring the impulse behind Grow Mercy, but will be shifting, exploring, following a hybridized urge, and a genre to suit. For me, what these decades have increasingly revealed is how writing is a spiritual path. Now, for whatever time and energy remains for me, I’ll be tilting more toward The Ragged Psalmist, still inchoate, but the handle feels like it fits. I do hope you’ll subscribe.

Why — The Ragged Psalmist?

Because some stubborn ember, still warm, compels me to write some cobbled songs — praise and lament, cries and sighs — and sound them back to the sacred Mystery.

To throw a wrench into a world geared up for business; to resist the moneychangers in their corporate temples — because poetry is political, and light is its administrative wing.

Because old lies and old words screw us over and must be remade to tell the truth; because our glossary of mockery needs burial, and the lexicon that’s left needs anointing.

To strive to honour the life of a sparrow; attend the spell of a dead star — whose light we still see; to feel, down to the bone, the quantum foam, we all flail in.

To thicken compassion and thin out aggression; to oppose injustice and hate in a way that excludes no one, not even the hater.

To let failure, discouragement, suffering and perishing have their say, without any spoon of bromide; to let joy, delight, and beauty come as they may.

To penetrate darkness and delusion — and so discover all this love in us.

Because mindfulness and mercy need constant oxygen.

Because in the time that’s left I want to tattoo the implications of our “forgiving victim” on the body suit of my heart.

Because reality points to unity — and we must hurry to catch up.

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