Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing like the ones
in the old stories...
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests...
...Requests to stop what
you are doing right now
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life....
Steeping ourselves in a place, simmering in its bounties, celebrating its wonders, and loving its peculiarities are necessary steps on a spiritual journey. We often take for granted the places where we work and play. To get to know them again, or perhaps for the first time, involves acts of consecration and imagination. Or as Wendell Berry puts it: "My most inspiring thought is that this place, if I am to live well in it, requires and deserves a lifetime of the most careful attention."