The Peace of Wild Things

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

–Matthew 6:25-34

On Monday, the author and poet Wendell Berry died at the age of 92. Berry was a prolific writer and farmer from Kentucky who spent his life calling us back into relationship with the natural world, with those around us, and with the God who sustains it all. He was deeply skeptical of the modern world’s obsession with efficiency, mobility, technological ubiquity, and the pressures of endless progress at the expense of people, places, and stories that ground us. He wanted us to be rooted—to particular places, to relationships, to something bigger than ourselves.

I first encountered Berry in seminary, where his agrarian style and essays on the value of place and rootedness would cause me to have to slow down and ask hard questions about what it was I really valued. He reminded me of my grandfather, who was never in a hurry and whose own farming roots kept him connected to the land, to creation, and to God in ways that deeply shaped my own spiritual journey. It was never about bigger and better or faster and cheaper; it was always about what was right. That’s an increasingly rare value in a world that thrives on constant competition and spectacle and growth. Berry wanted us to remember what Jesus taught, that we are not ultimately dependent on ourselves or our own ingenuity or technology, but on the Creator who has given us the creation and our relationships as gifts to be received rather than dominated or controlled.

That is good news in a world filled with anxiety and injustice. When we feel the grip of despair, or fear, or worry about the future, we can rest in the peace of God’s gift of creation. That’s what Berry reminded us of in one of his most famous poems, “The Peace of Wild Things.”

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.