A good thought for Monday
by chuckofish
The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell BerryWhen 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.
I especially like the line about taxing our lives with “forethought of grief.” Why do we do that? Lord, help me to rest in the grace of the world!
dual personalities 
I guess we’re just morbid by nature. Nice quote to remind us not to indulge that trait.
Clearly we are not the only ones!
Its amazing how point of view can help interpret something in so different a way. “And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.” For TS Eliot, who’s “despair for the world” was pretty well developed, stars were something else. “And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.” Perspective is pretty important then. And one must do his (or her) best to be optimistic!!
I whole-heartedly agree. BTW, didn’t my dual personality once tell me “the only sin is despair”? — Where did she get that? Still, it’s hard to buck our natural tendency to worry. Just wait ’til you have kids!
Frederick Buechner: ” Despair has been called the unforgivable sin–not presumably because God refuses to forgive it but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven.” Kierkegaard also had something to say about it in “The Sickness Unto Death”.