Still Water

Still Water

There is no question, all around us this world we live in feels broken; sometimes beyond our imagination that repair is possible.  We each carry it differently.  In our fear, it may emerge as a weight or a depression.  We may express it through blame or projection to the “other.” 

There is an alternative to our encounter with “the broken places” that can allow us to carry this burden with a lightness; with what author Richard Rohr calls a “bright sadness.”

The weight or despair does not disappear, though we can be in a different relationship with it; a rest or a grace that brings some freedom around the constriction.

This poem is a favorite for its gracious invitation to allow the beauty of the created world all around us to offer us peace - the gift and freedom of still water.

The Peace of Wild Things

         -- 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 to 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.