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This post is part of a broader series where Full Table contributors reflect on Wendell Berry’s work to celebrate his life and legacy. The list of reflections can be found here.��

This year I celebrated my 40th birthday. Although I’m not (hopefully) late in life, the milestone lends itself to reflection. When I began my adult life, I was working multiple jobs, pawning instruments and electronics, and donating plasma as often as I could. Most of my energy went toward caring for and protecting my alcoholic mother. My abusive father had walked out earlier and my brother was off at college enjoying his freedom. In addition, I was raised in Memphis, TN; at that time Memphis was the most dangerous city in America. Surviving outweighed thriving most of the time.

I was fortunate that the Lord called my name as I sat on a park bench after a long night finding and caring for my momma. I remember feeling tears roll down my face, not understanding why I was crying during worship the first Sunday I attended church. As I grew to know Jesus, the trajectory of my life changed. I knew I wanted to spend my life sharing the mercy, peace, and love that I found in Him. It was the steadiness I had always needed in my life that couldn’t be taken away. Every child deserves to know this unconditional love.

When I decided to become a Classical educator, I had a lot of catching up to do. I was fortunate that reading, music, and dance had often been my place of escape, so reading wasn’t something I had to learn to love. Many of the classics, however, hadn’t crossed my path. I definitely knew nothing of poetry. Wendell Berry was an author I was encouraged to read early in my career, and his words resonated with me like a song.

As I heard of his passing, I reread many of his poems. “The Sycamore” resonated in a way that it never had befor.

THE SYCAMORE

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it.
There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

I know that there is an old tree growing in me, moving toward a full healing once I rise to my strange perfection with Jesus, regardless of the warp and bending of my long growth. I know God has gathered all my accidents into my purpose and will continue to do so over the next forty years.

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