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Month: October 2019

Church/Light/Religion

The Old Pastor

Posted on October 27, 2019 by stephen t berg / 6 Comments

Stroll into any old story, the ones they used to tellin prairie town coffee-klatch cafés; the ones they used to share in small sober groups and store up for mid...

Faith/Life/Religion

Sliding Into the Fourth Quarter of Life — The Plush Green Moss of Eight Beatitudes

Posted on October 20, 2019 by stephen t berg / 4 Comments

  You’re not sure when the rules slipped out of your filing cabinet to wander beyondthe respectable suburbs and lose their way.You only know that they have. You...

Beauty/Thanksgiving

Cresting the Coquihalla

Posted on October 11, 2019 by stephen t berg / 13 Comments

Cresting the Coquihalla Thank you for that evening driving back from Saskatoonin the golden flush of falland a shimmering harvest sun was suspendedover a slough...

Family/Hope/Love

Young Moms seem the Happiest

Posted on October 2, 2019 by stephen t berg / 6 Comments

It is a truth to say young momsseem the happiest of our lot.It seems trite to say, there is hope hereand yet it is trueand should batter downour sophisticated e...

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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