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PEACE PRACTICES: The Peace of Wild Things

A very easy practice to center oneself in the morning before the day takes off - or at night before you go to bed to quiet your mind - is to read or listen to a poem.

One of the most impactful enivironmental activists, peacemakers and poets of our time is Wendell Berry. Here for your first practice is his poem, 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.

Listent to Wendell read it here - his voice alone will bring you to a peaceful state: https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/04-the-peace-of-wild-things-by