Wendell Berry begins his poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” “When despair for the world grows in me.” It’s not if, but when the narrator of the poem feels the grip of such thoughts, he says: “I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.” He physically moves himself outdoors, where he can see these birds in their own environment going about their routines and where, he says, “I come into the peace of wild things” and “For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
The shortcomings of everything on this side of heaven – ourselves emphatically included – naturally incites anxiety. The question is not if, but when – and when these thoughts arrive, what do we do?
That the response of Berry’s narrator is embodied movement to the natural world which is so overtly outside human endeavor is significant. He chooses to move himself where his being will receive something that is unlike and independent of himself, something that is not the result of his own labor; he did not create the life around him, and the birds will go about their days whether or not he acknowledges them.
The birds’ beautiful existence that continues regardless of the narrator’s troubled thoughts is itself a form of stability, as it’s up to the narrator to decide if he will turn his face toward them or not – their ability to bless does not require his presence or willingness to receive what they offer. In this way, they point to a greater kind of stability, and I feel that it is this indication of a stability both outside and greater than any human effort that ultimately brings him peace.
The psalmist wrote:
As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people
both now and forevermore.
(Psalm 125:2)
Mountains sustain over many generations with relatively little change. The fact that the people of Oʻahu a century ago (and before that) looked at the same Koʻolau mountains I’m able to see is one realization that emphasizes the smallness of my life in time.
The Koʻolau mountains will be as they are regardless of my efforts, anxious thoughts, and decision to receive the blessing they impart. The Lord is like those mountains in his steadfast care. His is a stability greater than my strength to stay worry-free, and this stability extends beyond my time in this world. If the mountains remain stable through many human lifetimes, the stability of God must be immeasurable, “now and forevermore.”