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.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
* * *
I read the news. I study the polls. I remember.
My stomach’s in knots.
I opened an old book and betook myself to Walden, far from the madding crowd, far from death counts, burning forests, and the dismal swamp. I sat in the doorway with an old friend and gazed upon the mist hovering above the pond.
He had no radio, no television, no newspaper.
The sun rose.
A woodchuck waddled by.
A loon wailed.
I spoke of my worries, anxieties, and rage.
He pointed to his garden. He pointed to the birds. He pointed to the trees. These were his neighbors, his companions. He knew each by name.
We walked around the pond and into the woods. Leaves and twigs crunched beneath our feet. Squirrels scampered. Butterflies fluttered. Flies and other insects darted hither and yon. A breeze brushed by.
Time stopped. The past, the future, the present were one. We walked through four seasons and back to his doorway.
We sat in silence.
Can a man by taking thought add one inch to his stature? he asked out of the blue.
No, I replied.
Do the birds of the air or the flowers of the field worry themselves about tomorrow?
No, I replied.
Who sees the sparrow fall?
He stood, walked inside, and shut the cabin door.
I returned home.
I knelt by our fish pond. I listened to the birds. I gazed at the woods. I watched leaves falling, the seasons turning.
The sun set. The moon rose. An owl hooted. I fell asleep.
The election ended. The president conceded.
Civility returned. Racism receded. Democracy revived.
The mountains rejoiced.
The hills skipped like lambs.
The trees of the forest sang.
The lion lay down with the lamb.
And a little child led them beside still waters.
A sense of bucolic peace until a hard reawakening with “…the President conceded.” The jolt forced another look at the date of the post–October 2020. Now I get it… A month later we began to lose democracy, predicted from T’s own mouth months before the election, “If I don’t win, it’s because this election was rigged.” He would not concede the loss. How the MAGAquacks fell into line behind his subterfuge, squawking. Their own Party’s judicial rulings could not change their minds.
Dreams… not able to change reality but to help us survive it. I’ve got plenty.
It’s an awful lot to “accept the things I cannot change.” This is a time to work for the common good, for love of our neighbors, for rejecting the lies and manipulation, for finding unity and acting with collective courage to change what we can change. It’s a rocky road over a steep mountain but we’ve avoided ugly truths too long and fate or God or history or justice have set up the the opposites of freedom and tyranny and collectively we must choose. It is our collective conscience that is the real battlefield. Can we no longer hear the ancient Hebrew prophets? Is the Gospel of Good News and Love lost? We are forgetting the mad fever dreams of Harriet Tubman and John Brown and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and Tecumseh and Sitting Bull and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Dr King and Cesar. It’s a lot to bear. But it is our turn. It is up to all of us to act to change our collective conscious.
I needed this today… remembering what is true & real & available to receive if the heart & mind & soul open…” I open, I open, I open to receive…” Grateful in rural PA, heading home to SheTown later today…
The Wendell Berry poem is recited in one of my favorite meditations. A comfort
I agree. I love the Wendell Berry poem.
It’s always therapeutic to reconnect with our old friend H.D.T. He doesn’t mind and we don’t take offense when he’s finally has had enough, gets abruptly up, and closes his cabin door in your face. This acceptance is an understanding that only tried and true old friends have established over time, based on familiarity and trust. The sun will rise tomorrow whether we are here to greet it or not. Better to have taken that walk with HD than with Ernie, god love him! His demons finally sucked him into their vortex. A walk in the woods can fix most all mental and spiritual discombobulations. (One has to love that word.) The pond, the woods, and the fields are patiently waiting for us to show up. 🙂
I recently discovered the work of John Muir via Calm, via Samsung Health, in the Sleep section, on my TV (and smartphone). “Among the Birds of Yosemite” read by Alan Sklar. Just passing it on as an accessible, free antidote (anti-social-media-dote?)
I love Wendell Berry’s poem and your time spent with Thoreau in Walden. With the fortification that communion with nature gives us, we can summon our courage, stand tall, speak truth and stand up for injustice, cruelty, manipulation and the thievery, destruction, and belittling of all of the goodness that is everyone’s birthright, every creature’s birthright, every tree, rock and stream’s birthright. Communion with nature is the key.
I thought. You know we have birds in California. And a calm overtook me like never before.