Returning from LaForet on Wednesday, I took Highway 50 west along the Arkansas River so I could savor the golden cottonwoods and the silvery glint of light on the water. The serenity I found on that drive was quickly shattered when, upon returning to Montrose, I learned of another impossibly violent mass shooting—this one in Maine.
What do we do when we are overwhelmed by news, either the public kind or the very personal kind? We seek solace where we can. Sometimes this comes to us through music and familiar hymns, sometimes scripture, and sometimes by way of the gift poets have given.
Waking up on Thursday, Wednesday evening’s horrible news was still horrible, I found myself recalling these words from the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry. I’m not sure I would recognize a wood drake, but even so, Berry’s wisdom soothes and challenges me. I will not find what I am needing in the headlines. Waiting for me elsewhere are gifts of comfort, steadying, and peace. This is true for all of us when despair for the world grows within.
With you on the journey,
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
