Together on the Journey:
A Weekly Blog 

My kid absolutely loves berries of all kinds. When we come downstairs in the morning together, when it’s still dark, I will pour her some milk and ask her what she wants for breakfast. The answer is usually strawberries, and if those aren’t available, then blueberries will do, or blackberries. If raspberries are on the menu, she turns them into little hats on her fingers before enthusiastically biting them off. While she is distracted with her raspberry hats, I usually try and swipe some for myself. Raspberries, after all, are my favourite too.

We are nearing the end of berry season in Ontario, but while they are available my family consumes as many as we can. We all agree the winter ones just don’t taste the same, are more pretending to be berries. But experiencing the winter ones makes us all the more grateful for summer, for eating in season, and the beautiful and tasty gift of berries that God gives us.

This week’s poem for the Season of Creation is by Mary Oliver, an American poet who often writes about nature in her work. This poem reminds me of the gift of berries, and the gift of nature surrounding where those berries grow. We didn’t make it berry picking this year, but picking them right out of the ground has a way of connecting you to a place and time, and experiencing that connection is a true gift from God. Amen.

Blueberries
by Mary Oliver

I’m living in a warm place now, where
you can purchase fresh blueberries all
year long. Labor free. From various
countries in South America. They’re
as sweet as any, and compared with the
berries I used to pick in the fields
outside of Provincetown, they’re
enormous. But berries are berries. They
don’t speak any language I can’t
understand. Neither do I find ticks or
small spiders crawling among them. So,
generally speaking, I’m very satisfied.

There are limits however. What they
don’t have is the field. The field they
belonged to and through the years I
began to feel I belonged to. Well,
there’s life, and then there’s later.
Maybe it’s myself that I miss. The
field, and the sparrow singing at the
edge of the woods. And the doe that one
morning came upon me unaware, all
tense and gorgeous. She stamped her hoof
as you would to any intruder. Then gave
me a long look, as if to say, Okay, you
stay in your patch, I’ll stay in mine.
Which is what we did. Try packing that
up, South America.

(Oliver, Mary. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin Press, 2017)