Keeping Advent (2A Wednesday): The peace of wild things

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11:6)
Beerhorst_Peaceable-Kingdom
"Beerhorst_Peaceable-Kingdom" by Rick&Brenda Beerhorst, on Flickr

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
from The Selected Poems of 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.

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