Lenten Meditation: 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.

~by Wendell Barry