This has been a busy, stressful day. It is election day across the country and on a local level, that included a mock election for our students in the commons area outside my room. It was also picture day, which as any teacher can tell you is chaotic. Basketball season is starting and for Ocracoke School that is huge; our athletes (remember our numbers are small, so fielding varsity and junior varsity (boys) teams involves a large proportion of our students. They will leave at 9:30 Thursday morning for an away game and will not return until after midnight. With the Veterans day holiday on Friday, there is a bit less impact than for most games. We will have a Veterans Day ceremony on Thursday morning and this is the week of the island’s first Latino Festival, which includes some sessions during school this week. Hectic? You bet! So here I offer an antidote to the stress in my own situation and that everyone in the United States is facing tonight. (Thanks to my friend Carrie Galloway for sharing this with me.)
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
bethdlayton 