On the second day of fog, she goes to meet it

sits on the broad root of a broken down
apple tree, remembers being a child
in such fog, searching for fairy houses.
She hears movement in the grass,
keeps very still while the veil of haze
rises to treetops bronzed
by the burn of the sun. Slowly
horses and deer appear all around her,
they graze close together,
nosing fallen apples, until she forgets
this is still a fallen world.
~Lonnie Hull DuPont, “On the Second Day of Fog” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name 

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 “The Peace of Wild Things“

When our grandchildren come to visit,
I watch as yet another generation rediscovers the mystery of
what we know about the joys and sorrows
of this fallen but redeemed world.

I am reminded there is light beyond the fearsome darkness,
there is peace amid the chaos,
there is a smile behind the tears,
there is stillness within the noisiness
there is rest despite the restlessness,
there is grace – ah, there is grace
as inevitably the old gives way to the new.