Meditation for Mark 6:30 – 34; 53 – 56

What a good time of the year to listen to Jesus remind his disciples that they need to rest a while from their comings and goings to a “deserted place by themselves.” Not a place without conflict, but a place where they can hear something beating inside their hearts. For renewal. The poet Wendell Berry understands the same need:
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. —   Wendell Berry