How can we find peace in the midst of difficult times? It’s been 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, yet we continue to live through turbulent times. American poet, environmental activist, and farmer, Wendell Berry wrote a poem in 1968 during another turbulent time in American history.
After reading Berry’s poem the other day I decided to visit my favorite place to hike, the Crab Tree Nature Center. Crab Tree is a place where I can lose myself as I savor the wildness of the rolling, glacier-formed landscape and trails traveling though forest, savanna and wetlands. Yesterday the open fields were ablaze with yellow daisies (photo above), goldenrod and purple asters. The wildness of it all brought me great peace. Borrowing Berry’s words, I drank in the ‘grace of the world’ and felt totally free.
Later I read that the color yellow is associated with the qualities of confidence, optimism, happiness and friendliness, all qualities that are so needed now.
May you, too, find peace of mind and optimism during despairing times.
Wendall Berry
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.
“Always have something beautiful in your sights,
even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.”
~H. Jackson Brown, Jr., American Author
Join me for free Sunday and Thursday meditation.
Harmoniously,
Jacqui