R.E. Slater - Untitled

Untitled

by R.E. Slater

In the grey drizzled woods of fall,

When cold damp and lightless days

Fill bitter earth with numbing soul,

Come the long, dreary days of indifference,

Shutting one out, alone, to deep yearning

For a life of wonder; wonders nourishing

Writers of soul and conviction, who

Alone, fixed in mind and thought,

Wrenching emotion, defeat, frustration,

Solitaire hardships in manifest hazard.

What joy abounds are but thorny slivers

To the stabbing pains of wounded heart

When world wonders not, blithely ignoring

Gaping maw of dark crypt stretching forth

Morbid dead hands reaching up to take

Unrepentant and penitent alike, tho' dislike

Each in journey, but not unlike in social ills

Experienced, wrought of consumptive,

Unfetted ignorance of degenerate politick

Murdering soul and spirit of one-and-all.

A brighter redemption thoroughly was meant,

Yet the grave is unatoning, yea unforgiving when

Stealing a people's grey days held in lightless

Mirth, consuming very words of life and breath,

From hope of things yet to pass, sealing off

Very collected imaginations of grace, yet

Yearning fey mansions golden, colored bright,

Bedecked jeweled halls of ladened wealth, but

Wretched enterprises and testament to dying

Woods, songless fields, joyless days, broken heart.

R.E. Slater

September 22, 2021

@ copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Rain in the Woods (Nature Sounds Series #2)

Rain Sounds, Woodland Ambiance, Trickling Streams

[set speakers low - re slater]

Dec 6, 2011

Wendell Berry - Short Poems

What a Poem Looks Like | Wendell Berry's "Sycamore"

"That We Might Become Native to the Places We Live." - Luke Turpin

Apr 25, 2020

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not,

Nature is party to all our deals and decisions,

and she has more votes, a longer memory,

and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

- Wendell Berry

Stay Home by Wendell Berry - Poetry Read Aloud

Mar 25, 2020

"A Vision" by Wendell Berry

Jan 14, 2021

“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary

full of wheat and drawing out a handful.

There is always more to tell than can be told.”

- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Theoretical Fragments (6/11):Wendell Berry and the question of place

Aug 22, 2020

How To Be A Poet (To Remind Myself) by Wendell Berry

Sep 30, 2016

“I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My task lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle.” - Wendell Berry

 

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry,

A Poetry Film by Charlotte Ager & Katy Wang

Oct 26, 2020

The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry - Movie Clip

May 25, 2016

The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry is a cinematic portrait of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture, as seen through the mind’s eye of one of the most influential writers of the past half-century.

Wendell Berry's Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

Sep 11, 2017

“The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

- Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity

No Compromise: A Defense For the Earth

Nov 4, 2013

Suggested Books to Read for Beginners

That Distant Land: The Collected Stories (Port William) 

This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems 

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry 

The New Yorker: Going Home with Wendell Berry

R.E. Slater - Stewards of the Earth: A Trilogy

Being, Begetting, Becoming

by R.E. Slater

If we consider humanity's being-ness as part-and-parcel with humanity's doing-ness then we bear the charge to "Live Responsibly in an Unfinished World" (e.g., unfinished, in the sense of present-tense processual actualizations which never cease from their activity of prehending the past --> to self-actualizing the present --> to comprehending the future; also known as a process of concrescence).

Humanity's underlining primary burden for planet earth must be that of "caretaker pro tem" continuing all past efforts of earthcare into the present tense of effectuating all future efforts of eco-humanitarianism implying Earth's stewardship and as humanitarian purveyors of social justice.

By this unfinished term of caretaker is meant not only our caretake of earth but also our caretake of one-another, of humanity itself. That we are charged to mend, heal, repair the realm of God drawing both aspects of caretake together as one - by healing and mending both earth and mankind. And when undertaking these tasks, we are also healing and mending God's soul as much as God is empowering us to heal and mend ourselves.

So, humanity does not simply bear a singular task but a dual subset of the singular task to mend, heal, and repair the earth and each other... neither of which we have done very well... if, at all, in many cases.

Finally, in our earthly caretake of nature and people we, as earth's cosmic progeny, are intimately bound and identified with this earth... having been birthed from its "soils, waters, and airs" wherein we are linked, connected to, and are endowed with an infinite affinity, or earthly kinship, with our earthly cosmos. A cosmic cosmos which has birthed us as our cosmic mother to all possible individual human outcomes to its own possible cosmic outcomes, which, taken together, presents a concrescence sense of being and becoming for all entities evolving from novelty to novelty towards forms of completeness and wellbeing.

R.E. Slater

September 8, 2021

Being and Begetting
by R.E. Slater

We each give birth and rebirth,

one to the other; we are the

unfinished sons and daughters,

of this unfinished world...

Each a cosmic entity, providing

life-giving identity,

cosmic fulfillment,

interlocking purpose...

An envisioned divine fellowship,

birthed to one another, as

birthed by our cosmic mother,

begun at the hands of God...

Who cares for all; Is part of all,

Sustaining and thriving with all,

Engulfing and flowing with all,

Co-inheritors of God's eternal Self...

And so, we do the same;

we are to create,

to nourish, to provide room,

for endless thrival...

No war. No destruction.

No hate. No bigotry.

No racism. No Inequality.

We are the Cosmic One...

Called to heal and repair,

to do our tasks well.

yea, more than well!

Gloria Dei!

R.E. Slater

September 8, 2021

Rev. Sept. 15, 2021

@ copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

The Processual Cycle of Life

by R.E. Slater

From earth's cosmos mankind is birthed,

And to earth's cosmos mankind returns,
That in life or death we nurture that
which bore us, sustaining it as it sustains
ourselves, our mother, our parent, our home.

R.E. Slater
September 8, 2021

@ copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Stewards of an Unfinished Earth

by R.E. Slater

We, the fractured servants of this world,

are not it's superiors, but it's guardians

of a world we prepare for God's restless

dwelling; that each part harmonizes with

the other, bring wholeness to field and

stream, flower and beast, man and God.

R.E. Slater

September 8, 2021

@ copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

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https://allsoulskc.org/all-posts/congregational/relational-groups/humanistnov2020/