Ritual, Eucharist, & Wendell Berry
I’ve been re-reading Wendell Berry’s short novel, Remembering. This book deals with a man’s relationship to himself, his family and his heritage. He is seeking to find his place in his vocation and his familial environments. Every act of remembrance is sacramental and pulls him into deeper meaning. Berry’s writing is so poetic and beautiful it is easy to get caught up in the movement of the story.This paragraph half way through the story brought to mind the self reflection which transpires before the Eucharistic meal. How many times have we been pushing that 75 foot barn in front of our lives?
“He is held, though he does not hold. He is caught up again in the old pattern of entrances: of minds into minds, minds into place, places into minds. The pattern limits and complicates him, singling him out in his own flesh. Out of the multitude of possible lives that have surrounded and beckoned to him like a crowd around a star, he returns now to himself, a mere meteorite, scorched, small, and fallen. He has met again his one life and one death, and he takes them back. It is as though, leaving, he has met himself already returning, pushing in front of him a barn seventy-five feet by forty, and a hundred acres of land, six generations of his own history, partly failed, and a few dead and living whose love has claimed him forever. He will be partial, and he will die; he will live out the truth of that. Though he does not hold, he is held. He is grieving, and he is full of joy. What is that Egypt but his Promised Land?”
- Wendell Berry, Remembering pg 48
