July 24 2017

Related to the freedom to grieve we discussed last week, a second connection between grief and freedom is finding freedom within the grief.  When you allow yourself to feel and express your grief, you are very present to the moment. Within the present moment is freedom. Please here these words of Wendell Berry in “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.