The Peace of Wild Things
It’s hard to listen to the news these days without despairing for the world we live in. Military incursions, mass shootings, and political rancor fill our newspapers, television broadcasts, radio programs, and social media sites. Sometimes it feels we’re surrounded on all sides by violence and strife. Sometimes it’s all just too much.
Don’t worry, says Wendell Berry. There is a place of respite waiting for you. And it is all around you every day. It’s the grove of trees at the end of the subdivision, the creek that runs through a nearby park, the woods behind the elementary school. If you have access to none of these, then look for it in that little patch of weeds lining the sidewalk, or the clouds floating above. If only for a time, writes Berry, we can rest in these spaces of peace and be free.
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
