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.

— Wendell Berry

On a busy day, when life seemed flooded with too many challenges, with one thing after another breaking down or going wrong. I took a deep, deep breath and went and sat by my upstairs floor to almost ceiling window, and looked out into my back yard.

I saw a mother doe and her young deer eating the fallen apples in our back yard. I called to them from my heart and waited. Step by step, they began to walk across the field.

And then as I emphatically called to them to come closer, the miracle happened. The mother walked under my prayer arch with all of its bright colored prayer flag strings of fabric, and paused and looked right at me.... and straight into my heart.

It was such a blessing of pure joy of contact. Such a gift from one world to another and I felt, truly felt, the peace of all wild things coming from her and right into me.

So, now, I share that peace with all of you. And I ask that you take a moment,one moment.  I ask for that one thought, one moment, back from you, in return.

Please take a moment and hold a thought of peacefulness and blessings for someone you love.

Miracles do not always come in the form that we think they should. They do not often answer our prayers in the same form that we may want them to be answered.

But a miracle is a gift of the unexpected, a gift of a blessing at a time when we need them most. A time when we call forth all of our strength and goodness and power to face our lives with hope and the ability to still find joy in small things.

To feel peace, to feel bits of joy, and to always...no matter what..feel hope. That during the times of greatest challenges and deepest sorrows or feelings of loss that there still may be gifts and blessings and peace from one to another shared.

That is the true miracle that each of us wants, and needs when it is our time to pause, stand at the center of prayer, and look into and shares another's heart.

Today, I share my peace for all you have lost, or fear losing, I share my peace for all that is unsettled or challenging in your own life.

Find you own center, breathe in and feel the blessings, feel the gratitude, feel the peace that passes through to the other side and into your own true heart of understanding.

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands.