Daily Archives: November 1, 2014

Bruce Weigl wrote this lovely poem. When we practice, the Sabbath we find our way home. We re-discover roots we often leave behind in the busyness of our day-to-day lives.

There is a paradox in this leaving of roots. They remain attached as we can detach from them. We can ignore the roots, but the are always there. We cannot shake loose from them. They follow us and eventually we stop the shaking. We let the roots feed and nurture us the way they can.

In Sabbath practice, we listen to the music that translates the world into dirt fields that always call us. We rejoice in the dirt fields of our youth and find our spirit in those dirt fields. The roots helped make us who we are. We can never escape from those roots or plow them under.

I didn’t know I was grateful

           for such late-autumn

                       bent-up cornfields

yellow in the after-harvest

             sun before the

                       cold plow turns it all over

into never.

           I didn’t know

                        I would enter this music

that translates the world

             back into dirt fields

                         that have always called to me

as if I were a thing

             come from the dirt,

                         like a tuber,

or like a needful boy. End

             Lonely days, I believe. End the exiled

                           and unraveling strangeness.