I am in need of peace and hope. No, I am not in despair, but there are times in this chaos of 2018 in America when it seems that all that was familiar is being dismantled or hatefully deconstructed. And what I value in life: kindness, honesty, caring actions towards others, strength of purpose, wisdom . . . these things are being devalued, tossed away, seen as weak and worthless.
It is when I realize I am on the edge of the dark abyss that I go to my Poetry and Inspiration digital file. When I taught, I always opened my class with 5-8 minutes of silent centering/meditation/ breathwork and then (to end the silence) read one of many poems that I had collected over the years and that fit the day’s class content. One of them was Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things:
When despair 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 for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Today is a day on the edge of the abyss, and so I go happily to walk in today’s rain shower and feel the cleansing and peace of just being alive. I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
Blessings and hope and peace.
Jane +
Pilgrimages and Paths 