One great cosmic hug

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

The pond beckons today. Few come here even though it is only a few yards from the main trail. It’s not much, a low-lying wildwood pool fed by nothing I can see other than run-off from the surrounding woods. Nor is it big, less than 50 yards long and maybe 25 yards wide, tapering to just a few feet on the south end.

I doubt it is more than three feet deep in the middle, although I am not inclined to wade in and see. Broken boughs tilt at odd angles into the water, disappearing beneath the surface. Gray-bleached by the sun, some fell years ago, a few, I’m sure, from the tornado that scalped these woods two years back.

But the jumble of that tumult does not disturb as I stand at the water’s edge, nor does the turbulence of the daily news or the disorder of my own mind.

A greening ring of marsh grass frames the pond, punctuated by a few odd stones put there by no human hand. The scene is pristine, curated by summer and winter, spring and fall, wind and rain, bitter cold and summer’s blast, by thousands of years of photosynthesis, growth, death, decay and rebirth, through dozens of processes I neither understand or ever will.

Lord only knows the number of animals, insects and life forms find their subsistence here, far beyond the squirrels, racoons, coyotes and a host of bird species that even the most casual eye can capture on average days.

One thing that doesn’t live here is us, homo sapiens. There is no evidence that anyone ever lived in this stretch of woods on the outskirts of suburbia, other than Native Americans hundreds of years ago, who likely hunted these woods and took water from the stream to the east.

They had the good sense to let nature do its thing, as opposed to ‘improving it’ by making it into something it is not, for it already was … and is … something rare and beautiful, wild and free from the touch of human hands, its grace known by those who can stand still for a while.

And there is no one like that out here today, except me. Leaden skies, threatening rain, kept the walkers home. But I am here and home at the water’s edge, mud oozing around my boots as a frightened frog plops in the muddy water to my right while his cousins sing a song of spring from the other side.

Details brought me here, rain be damned, my head a muddle from a stack of small jobs mocking me from my desk, demanding attention, exhausting my patience as I felt the day slipping away until I slipped away to come here to find peace or something like it.

No importunate task demands my attention here. No news of the world intrudes imploring me to worry about things I can do nothing about. The marsh grass is indifferent to my approach, the water asks nothing of me, the dead limbs and greening trees, unchanged by my presence, go on decorating the earth with the mysteries of life and death. And the frogs sing a bass line for the treble of bird song above, pausing only for a moment to make sure I present no threat before calling and croaking and saying whatever it is that frogs say to each other.

Standing here, I am neither above or below it all, but a part of the drama of birth, growth, death, of sound and silence, that goes on here every day, my body throbbing with the same intimate processes that thrive among all that live in this place, quietly doing their work with every beat of my heart.

One, we are; all of us, all that I see and hear, including the earth worms at my feet so apparently delighted by the recent rains. All are part of one creation, one mystery of life, possessing being at the generous pleasure of the One who is Being itself—and whose joy it is to share.

Gifted we are, worms and all, sharing the life of the Life from whom all things flow like rain that falls and the warm rays of spring.

My peace I leave you; my own peace I give you, Jesus promised. Not just any peace, but his peace, which is his loving oneness with the Father, heart-to-heart, joined in a single love, loving everything that is.

Out here, I feel something like that, enfolded in one great cosmic hug.

 David L. Miller