The Peace of Wild Things

I think about it when I think about nights like this one.

A farmer and writer named Wendell Berry wrote a short one called The Peace of Wild Things.

The speaker wakes in the night in despair for his children's world and he goes out to lie by the water and watches the heron feeding.

And he says, I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

Say the last part again.

Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief? Some things do not carry the grief the way we do.

To have the glory forever.

The reading is The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, which we read in one sense in remembrance for him since he died just last Monday at the age of 92.

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 or 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 hear what the spirit is saying to the church

And also the Eucharistic prayer.