The Peace of Wild Things

taken at Greenbottom Wildlife Management Area ©A.Rutherford

I was reading today in A Continuous Harmony, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry.  The subtitle of the book is "Essays Cultural & Agricultural." Wendell Berry is a distinguished man of letters, critically acclaimed as a poet, a novelist, and an essayist.  Berry is also a life-long Baptist,  a teacher, and a farmer in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Berry set me to pondering when in one of his essays he quotes Thoreau.   Although at first consideration, this might not seem to relate to the discussion about tension and angst in the arts and in the general culture that we’ve been having in this blog, but upon reflection I think it sheds some light on aspects of that theme.

Here is Thoreau, writing about Autumn, in his journal from Nov. 20, 1851:

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man, and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry. The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast.

The modern conceit, or pretension, or whatever, is that only the "sophisticate" is culturally literate enough to either produce or enjoy poetry, or to be, as Thoreau expressed it, "susceptible . . . to the finest influences, as music and poetry."  The same is true for the pretensions of most contemporary artists and art critics.   The "sophisticate" of course is at home in the "civilized" world of the city.  The rustic life is not for him, and the rustic soul does not understand him and his needs, or so he thinks.  Of course, it can rightfully be argued that is a two-way street.   True, the rustic may not understand the angst which the Post-Modern poet or artist feels is the necessary ingredient for a valid expression of one's literary or artistic talents.  But neither do most "sophisticates" understand the beauty or the harmony the rustic can appreciate and express in his works.  Fortunately, having spent time in both worlds, I feel I have experienced enough of both to be able to judge for myself who most nearly approaches the Truth of what it means to be human, either in the created works of his mind or his hands,  or to appreciate the created order as the God-gift that it is to refresh and renew the human spirit.

To be alive in this world is a wonder-filled thing.

Here is Wendell Berry expressing this sentiment in a poem of his own:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of 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 for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

What it is, I suppose that troubles me, is that too many people of Faith have listened to the siren song of the culture, and bought into the hard-sell of our materialistic society that Nature is there for our leisure pursuits and our recreation, rather than our re-Creation, an antidote against all that is causing the angst in our tension-ridden world.

Scripture tells us that Nature is to be studied as a way to tune our spirits to the Harmony inherent in Creation, as a place to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding, as an avenue to finding Truth, Beauty, and Goodness when we have lost sight of them in our fast-paced lives.  And out of this deep-seated harmony we are able to express our creativity in life-affirming ways.  

Isaiah 45:18 

  For the Lord is God,
      and he created the heavens and earth
      and put everything in place.
   He made the world to be lived in,
      not to be a place of empty chaos.
   “I am the Lord,” he says,
      “and there is no other.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart . . . “

Isaiah 40:26-31

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
   Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
   and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
   not one of them is missing.

 Why do you complain, Jacob?
   Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
   my cause is disregarded by my God”? 

 Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

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The natural world is a magical place in the positive sense of that word, as having a quality that makes something seem removed from everyday life, especially in a way that gives delight.  Click HERE for a glimpse of that magic and enjoy! _________________________________________________________________