10/06/2020

In times like these, finding peace can be a solitary quest. Everyone, it seems – myself included, needs a place to process all that swirls around us. Information, not always truth, surrounds us like a fog infused with opinions not only of our own, but compounded by the voices of our families, our friends, our associates, and voices from across the globe. How does one filter and settle on our own thoughts? How do we still the waters and quiet the storm so our own mind can settle upon our individual truth?

It is a time of intensity. A time of too much. A time when casual conversation is drowned out by the opinions and comments of the world. Where is our quiet time? Our time to walk along a stream and hear the sound of the water moving gently over the rocks?

The difference in music over the course of time seems somehow more demanding. Louder. Stronger. Stuffed with words that implore me to listen and take note. Surround sound, turn up the volume, Shhh the people, be quiet and listen! But everything is so loud we lose the ability to hear our own music, the music that lives within us.

I stumbled across this poem yesterday. It spoke to me. It embraced me. Maybe it will do the same for you.

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.