During the lock down days of the pandemic I went to these words by author, farmer-poet Wendell Berry quite often:

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.

The wisdom of these words grounded me, caused me to take a deep breath and to remember my place in the family of things. How there are creatures whose knowing is often richer and fuller than my human abilities. I would read them and imagine that body of water, those winged ones, the stars that are there even when I cannot see. It became a sign of the ‘grace of the world’ when grace often felt in short supply.

These last days in anticipation of this very consequential election that looms, I have been drawn back to them. And it has pushed me to envision what I can do in the next hours, days and probably weeks to rest in that kind of wisdom. I have been thinking about what I can do to relieve my anxiety and to help me rest in the grace of the world which once again seems to be a shadow on the edges of our daily lives.

So, I began to make some lists. Here goes. Every day I will remember to take deep, long breaths preferably of the fresh air outdoors in an autumn that is simply warmer and more beautiful than is usual. I have decided to make something every day…even if it is a sandwich…some act that brings to birth something that wasn’t there before and was created by my two hands. If it is music or art or a poem, even better. Reaching out to friends and making human connection will be very important so I will do that as many times a day as seems necessary. I will drink plenty of water remembering that I am made up mostly of this life-giving liquid. I will read beautiful words and listen to inspiring music. I will watch only what uplifts and brings me joy. If this includes a Hallmark movie or two or three, no judgment there. And I will recite the names of people I love and have loved and whose presence has shaped me and instilled a vision of hope in me. I will find ways to laugh, hopefully fully-body laugh, tears down your face laughter. I will spend as much time outside as possible unplugged from the media sources whose job seems to be to stir up fear and the anxiety I am fleeing. And I will walk…and walk…and walk some more holding close the Latin words “solvitur ambulando”…it is solved by walking. 

In thinking about what the next days will offer up I was also reminded of a short Colman Barks poem that always made me laugh and also rang with such truth: 

A child stood on his seat in a restaurant,
holding the railing of the chair back
as though to address a courtroom.

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen next.”

Then his turning-slide back down to his food,
relieved and proud to say the truth,
as were we to hear it.

Indeed, no one does know what will happen next and we have very little power to influence it except to vote. HAVE YOU VOTED?! Yet we do have choices about how we will traverse this time, how we will seek out the ‘grace of the world.’

What are your plans? I invite you to share them. They may help some one else which is grace in and of itself, isn’t it?