The Peace of Wild Things

I awoke this morning and did what I have often enough said to myself and others that I do not do: I took up The New York Times and browsed the front page, before I'd even brushed my teeth.

Perhaps I needed a reminder of the wisdom of my common practice: put off the news until the peaceful vulnerability of sleep had well receded. Perhaps I was still living with last night's regret that my evening's reading to sight-impaired folks was so unrelievedly full of darknesss, and I hadn't wanted to leave them with that experience to sleep upon.

In any event, the first page this morning was uniformly, unforgivably grim.

"Migrant Crisis Escalates, with Disasters on Land and Sea"

"Iran Deal Opens a Vitriolic Divide Among U.S. Jews"

"A Life of Grievances, Then a Final Homicidal Explosion"

"Trash and Contempt Pile Up in Lebanon"

and other headlines comparably dark.

 

By the time I'd had my coffee and lived a while with the growing light, I realized that a walk was in order, through the marsh, up into the hills. And without bidding I thought of a companion whose wisdom would walk with me, even a particular poem I knew by heart.

 

The Peace of Wild Things

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.

 

 

                        − Wendell Berry