When life feels fragile I pick up leaves and I sew them. I know the world is always going through upheavals, but it seems like lately, that troubling things keep happening at higher frequency. I have always been sensitive to energies and lately there has just been a building up that I feel coming from the outside world….and so I felt compelled to make these at the end of last week. The news cycle of the following week didn’t make that feeling go away. And then today, with the news that broke this morning, it just seemed right to share here.
The Peace of Wild Things
by 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 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.
Last week at some point I was “conversing” with a FB friend who is a wonderful landscape painter and I commented how I found his winter vegetable garden photos inspiring. And he said something that spoke to me- about how he makes pretty paintings here and there, but it’s the working of the soil that brings a balm to his spirit in a world gone wrong. I felt what he said very deeply. For me, I feel lucky in that sometimes things from the soil and the natural world, when they get in my hands, I end up making things with them and in that process I feel connected to the grace of the world
You post today touched my heart. I had just come in from removing coverings over tender plants in my garden. We had a hard frost last night and will again tonite. But for now the sun is out and they deserve a sunbathing. Thank you for including the poem.