CCC Gainesville | Blog
I don’t know this poet—Seamus Heaney—, but his passing trends on twitter and his poems are on NPR. Plus he’s Irish, which is awesome. And this poem makes me think of a wonderful upcoming class Christ Community is offering. Details forthcoming.
“Blackberry Picking” can be found in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996. Heaney, born in 1939, won the Nobel Prize in 1995. According to his Nobel biography, he grew up as a country boy on a farm in County Derry, northern Ireland.
Blackberry Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots
where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
we trekked and picked until the cans were full,
until the tinkling bottom had been covered
with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.
“Blackberry-Picking,” from OPENED GROUND: SELECTED POEMS 1966 -1996 by Seamus Heaney.
Thank you, Lord.
Today when reading 1 Samuel 20 I wrote down these phrases that jumped off page to me:
verse 8 You have brought your servant into a covenant of the Lord with you.
verse 17 Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.
verse 41 They kissed one another and wept with one another.
Verse 42The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring (which I’m 99% sure neither chap had yet), forever.
Then I looked to see which of the 4 passages in McCheyne (I’ll write something about this soon) was expounded upon by DON CARSON today. And, yeh baby, it was the one that was particularly riveting to me.
D.A. Carson: THERE ARE NOT MANY CHAPTERS in the Bible that devote much space to the theme of friendship, but 1 Samuel 20 is one of them.
Strictly speaking, of course, 1 Samuel 20 is not about friendship per se, in the way that friendship is a theme to be explored by a gifted novelist. The account fits into the larger narrative of the decline of Saul and the rise of David, a major turning point in redemptive history. Yet the way that account unfolds turns in important ways on the relationship between Jonathan and David.
Jonathan turns out to be a wholly admirable young man. Earlier he had shown considerable physical courage when he and his armor-bearer routed a contingent of Philistines (1 Sam. 14). When David became part of the royal court, one might have expected Jonathan to display many malevolent emotions: jealousy at David’s rising popularity, competitiveness in the military arena, even fear that David would one day usurp his right to the throne. But “Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself” (1 Sam. 18:1). He entered into a “covenant” with David that made David, in effect, his own brother (1 Sam. 18:3–4)—an astonishing step for a royal to take with a commoner. By the time we arrive at chapter 20, Jonathan is aware that David will one day be king. How he acquired this knowledge we cannot be sure. Given their friendship, David may have confided in Jonathan the account of his anointing at the hands of Samuel.
Not only does Jonathan not share his father’s malevolence, but, having once before effected a reconciliation between his father Saul and David (1 Sam. 19:4–7), he finds it hard to believe that his father is as implacably determined to kill David as David believes (1 Sam. 20:1–3). So the elaborate plan of this chapter is put into effect. Jonathan discovers that his own father is resolved on Jonathan’s best friend’s death. Indeed, his father is so enraged that Jonathan himself is in mortal danger (1 Sam. 20:33).
David and Jonathan meet. They renew their covenant, as they will do once more (1 Sam. 23:17–18). David, for his part, vows to look after Jonathan’s family if and when Jonathan is no longer around—a harbinger of things to come, and rather different from the normal bloodletting that customarily took place when a new king sought to wipe out the potential heirs of a previous dynasty.
But perhaps the most striking thing is that Jonathan stays in town with his father. For the fact of the matter is that we choose our friends, but we do not choose our family; yet our responsibilities to our families take a prior claim. Otherwise friendship itself becomes an excuse for a new form of selfishness.
Gentlemen, show up at NOON for an informal lunch with the guys. All are welcome, so feel free to bring a friend.
Monday August 26
Copper Monkey WEST
14209 W. Newberry Road
(352) 363-6338
September 2 Labor Day—none
September 9
Piesano’s Stone Fired Pizza
5757 SW 75th St
(352) 371-8646
Pray for these leaders and students who left this morning for an overnight.
