Peace is still here, waiting for you to find it.
In the days after the attack of September 11, it was hard for me to find peace. The attack and its aftermath left any sense of peace inside me and outside of me shattered. I couldn’t find my bearings for a few days.
Until I went out in nature.
I remember that first walk in the woods when the peace of wild things fell over me like a blanket to comfort me. The trees had no fear. The leaves had no enemies. The birds sang happily as ever.
The poet Wendell Berry comforted me with these words from his poem, 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.
I rest often in the grace of the world. Every day, rain, sleet or shine, I walk around the lake across the street. My neighbor once commented, “How can you not walk around the lake every day when it’s right there.”
We all have a lake of beauty nearby. It could be the sea of stars above or the green flowing grass underfoot or that river of leaves swirling past on the sidewalk.
Nature reminds me that peace is right where I stand on this spinning blue planet. In nature, my soul exhales. The leaves that surrender with such ease have no concern for country or religion, all these manmade creations that cause so much strife.
Every day when I see the heron, the turtle, the geese, they are almost always resting. Being. Basking. Teaching me how to be.
No matter what happens with the weather or the world this week, get outside and rest in the grace of nature.
Go for a hike. Take a walk. Open a window at night. Drink in the stars.
Peace is all around you. Let it in.