For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things.
Followers of the Pew know how I search for a phrase or sentence that can start my mind to thinking or my whole body meditating. The phrase, “the grace of the world” is one of those that caught my eye.
We are all familiar with the question, “is the glass half full or half empty.” It is so easy to focus on the darkness, the ugly, and the bad, yet Berry suggests we avoid the negative and rest in the world’s grace. In springtime, it’s easy to find grace all around us. The daffodils are budding, the peach blossoms tell us that the succulence of the perfect peach will soon be here, and the eagles and hawks are soaring in search of new nesting places.
God surrounds us in the grace of his love, but also in the grace of his creations which emerge in the spring of every year. It is not a coincidence that Lent falls in the advent of spring and culminates on Easter when the world is in full bloom. Don’t miss a moment of his grace.
PS: One of the “graces of the world” is Berry’s poem. It would be impolite of me not to share it with you today:
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.
Like you, Webb, Wendell Berry is a gift for all of us. Love his poems.
Thanks Janice. This one really struck me.
Spring, particularly this one, should imbue in all of us the recognition of ‘the grace of the world’! Thanks for such a poignant reminder.