Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.

The middle of the summer always seems like a good time to contemplate a poem from Wendell Berry, who is not only a lyrical wordsmith but also a novelist, cultural critic, and a Kentucky farmer. From The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, here is his poem “The Vacation,” which is a good reminder to be present not only during times of refreshment but also in our day to day life:

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

— The Rev. Neil Alan Willard, Rector