Now that Spring is here, I often turn the inner listening process called Focusing inside-out to keep company with wild things and then I bring it right side in.

I live in a kind of tree house, which blesses me with the awe and wonder Nature brings when she comes in close and rubs against my life to purr or growl, sharing her vulnerable wildness.

Today, this vixen fox, who I often hear shrieking at night in my back yard and who has two small babies, came to visit.

She got me thinking about what it means to be alive and vulnerable. There she was, wet from the rain, unprotected from weather, yet living her life fully. She made me wonder what Wendell Berry meant by the “peace of wild things.”

What peace does she enjoy? Nothing in her life is certain except that she must fully inhabit every moment.

Why did Wendell Berry go into the wild to quell his own fears?

Could it have been that, like this fox, what is wild continues to fully inhabit each moment, no matter how uncertain, living life to the full for as long as it is graced to be alive and free.

How grateful I am to be taught by that wisdom. And I invite you to wonder with me.

What does it mean to live, fully human in the face of the uncertainties of life?

What does it mean to “enter into the peace of wild things?”

What do we mean when we call that peace?