In the past year and a half I have had to battle for peace. Or at least it feels like it.
Maybe it is the same with you.
The barrage of sorrowful images and events assault day after day, even if we try not to watch the news. It seems our country is consumed with who’s right and who’s wrong and whatever side I am on is the right one (for sure). Certainty is a queen who dare not be questioned and yet we (I) carry so much uncertainty inside.
It was in such a time as this that Julian of Norwich wrote these words:
“But all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.”
But how?
And when?
Oh God, we are so full of need and so impatient to see all of our hopes finally have the desired outcomes!
Soul Care Institute C10 student, Amy Nemecek, is also an award winning and published poet. She wrote the following piece that speaks to my soul. Its words invite me to consider that even if I cannot access the whole river of wellness, maybe I can see the smallest bit of water saying indeed, it is well.
It Is Well
Peace like a river eludes me—
My pilgrim heart pants hard
after water brooks, pauses
to refresh body and soul
by some rain-swollen stream.
Drizzled droplets accumulate
on cattails and cottonwoods,
elongate to tears that land
in slick ripples and plump
to rings, slip over rocks,
diffuse into freshet springs.
—so I’ll be content with this creek.
This poem was first published in Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, issue 1 (June 2019), and is reprinted by permission of the poet.