When in doubt
Just as the world was about to change—and lock down, “for 2 weeks”—in March of 2020 I read an article about contemplative media studies. The author says that when the world is too much with us; we should go to the woods. There is wisdom in the trees and in the earth. I think that’s right. It’s not the trees themselves I’m listening too, nor the birds, or the wind; it’s in a practice of letting go.
There is real liberation in realizing that I am not the creator of the universe. Taking in more information or on more responsibility will likely not solve unsolvable problems. However, letting go of expectations and control may in fact help my well-being and that of those around me.
Letting go may or may not have a spoken prayer to accompany it. The process, however, is most certainly a spiritual practice.
“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.
The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Jesus, Matthew 6:25-34