The Peace of Wild Things
“Be still, and know that I am God.” –Psalm 46:10
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again; I don’t like this time of year. I don’t think I’ve been a fan of summer since I was a teenager. I cannot stand the heat and humidity. That’s not good since the earth is undeniably experiencing a warming trend. Things are hot and it’s getting hotter.
What I said above I could say again here concerning another subject—politics. I don’t like this time of year and am already dreading the next four months. I know we must have elections and that it is good that we live in a country where we have the freedom to vote for the candidate we choose, but I hate all the negativity that seems to come with political races, especially presidential ones.
The negativity is everywhere. It’s in the candidates’ ads that run on television and the radio. It’s on the annoying unsolicited automated phone calls that come on a regular basis. It’s all over the social media. When I go on Facebook these days it looks like a political war zone. I just don’t understand why people feel they have to be so hateful and demeaning. Almost everything I see and hear tells me why I shouldn’t vote for some particular candidate, not why I should vote for his or her alternative. The focus is not on what it should be–what’s right about a particular candidate. Things are hot and it’s getting hotter.
Last night I came across a Wendell Berry poem that seemed most appropriate to what I’m talking about. Berry writes: “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. 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.”
I am certainly grateful for “the peace of wild things.” I am thankful that God created beautiful and wild places where we can still escape from all the madness, if only for a moment. I think in some ways I need them more now than ever before. If I’m going to survive the next few months I have a feeling I’m going to have to spend less time in front of the television and computer and more time outdoors. I just wish it wasn’t so hot…
–Chuck
(I took the top image at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. I think I photographed the blue heron in Florida. I photographed the ferns at Pine Mountain State Park in Kentucky.)