The Peace of Wild Things

Vacation, Part 3: Ohio County

Friends have eyebrows raised when they learn that our family vacation 2007 took us from one of the most thriving metropolitan areas in the world to a 350-acre farm in a neighboring county. "Can anything good come from Ohio County?" "What exactly is IN Ohio County?" "What does a young family do for a week in Ohio County?" All good questions.

For people who haven't been to the Ford Family Farm.

A dear friend and his dear bride allowed us the privilege of taking sabbath for a week in their simple-while-luxurious cabin-turned-palace on his 350 acres of secluded, lush, green, and well-loved farmland. We ate basic but beautiful meals prepared with love by one another and found Christ's presence alive and at work around our common, family table; we swam in the newly prepared pond made cool by the rain and we remembered our baptism in it; we hiked the hills and watched for wildlife, and made our family stronger, more flexible, more attuned to the whispers of grace that blow like that wind in the tops of the trees. It was a perfect ending to an otherwise perfect time apart and away from the routines of life lived in the practice of Christian ministry. It was a different but altogether rewarding vocation (calling) to rest a spell and breathe in new life together. Indeed, we did!

While away, we read and read and read, when Zoe wasn't...being Zoe. Among the words that have most inspired us are these, penned by a Kentuckian, a poet, a psalmist, whose own life lived alongside the land, with pen in hand, have born in us a desire to be attentive to 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, 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."