Photograph: Ruth Mundy (this morning)
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least soundin 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.
Yesterday it was nigh on impossible to miss the news out of the United States about the Supreme Court decision regarding women's rights to make their own reproductive choices. After nearly 50 years the Roe v Wade ruling in favour of access to abortion was struck down using what a host of legal experts, including former justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, suggest were shaky constitutional arguments, at best. While this is an US decision, we are aware that when America sneezes, Canada catches a cold, or monkey pox, or some other malady.
This ruling brought about about a tsunami of responses, from jubilation to outrage. Lots of conservative Christians were ecstatic. I woke up this morning feeling heavy, world-weary, because of it all. As bleak as this news was, it is dwarfed by the reports of environmental disasters, including floods which have displaced 5 million in Bangladesh and a massive drought in the Horn of Africa.
It seems as though we can't run or hide from these grim realities and more, and we shouldn't try to avoid the realities unfolding around us. Still, before 7AM we were on the calm waters of the Moira River north of Belleville, paddling in our kayaks. Although some would regard this as an ungodly hour it was wonderfully Godly, awash in the sights and sounds of Creation.
Because the local river levels are so high this year we were able to sneak into a maple swamp which is usually inaccessible by mid-May. At one point we drifted without paddling to listen to a variation on the Dawn Chorus. There was plenty of birdsong but it was the astonishingly exuberant choir of leopard and bull frogs in surround-sound which amazed us. We always look forward to the spring peepers and chorus frogs, the sopranos and altos which announce Spring. This morning the tenors and basses were in full voice and it was wonderful.
We also saw blue and green herons, kingfishers, dragonflies and turtles. By the time we were back on the landing at 8:30 we both felt grateful and renewed. The Wendell Berry poem The Peace of Wild Things came to mind and while I've shared it a number of times over the years it still speaks to me.
Was this outing on the river avoidance on our part? I hope not. The painful stuff is still there and requires our vigilance and action. This is required of us as Christians who are responsible citizens of planet Earth, Turtle Island. I still want to delight in God's wondrous world,
and to my listening ears all nature sings,
and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is God's wondrous world; I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas, God's hand the wonders wrought.
Moira River --photograph: Ruth Mundy (this morning)
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