 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 the light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
As Buddhist teachings tell us, peace is being able to live in the present.
Take a minute to reflect on the way animals in nature just “are.” They do not “tax their lives with forethought.” Nor do they obsess about the past. What can you find to focus on right now that will help you be fully present in this moment? Maybe a tree, a leaf, the clouds? Allow yourself to become fully present right now and feel yourself “rest[ing] in the grace of the world.”