Peace

One looks back at this moment or that in one’s life and says, Ah, yes, that was a happy moment; and the wise will even recognize happiness when they see it under their noses. Pain we know when we have it but forget when it is gone. Peace: not the peace that comes with triumph or the ripening of a dream, but the peace of rightness, the sight of the wholeness of our existence—this too we can feel in retrospect and occasionally in the flesh. I write at such a moment.

We are midway of a Sunday afternoon, one of those Massachusetts miracles of a blue windless day when people stroll in their shirtsleeves although the snow lies all about. Through the window at my right I can see past the barn to the foals in the field, the sun behind them lighting them with outlines of fire; the filly, part Chincoteague, has winter plumage like a Persian lamb. Beyond the foals I see the clean rows of blueberry bushes in whose honor this farm is named, and amongst whose sweet abundance the youngest senior editor of this journal and his bride have been known to sing madrigals.

WR

About the Author

William F. Rickenbacker

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One looks back at this moment or that in one’s life and says, Ah, yes, that was a happy moment; and the wise will even recognize happiness when they see it under their noses. Pain we know when we have it but forget when it is gone. Peace: not the peace that comes with triumph or the ripening of a dream, but the peace of rightness, the sight of the wholeness of our existence—this too we can feel in retrospect and occasionally in the flesh. I write at such a moment.

We are midway of a Sunday afternoon, one of those Massachusetts miracles of a blue windless day when people stroll in their shirtsleeves although the snow lies all about. Through the window at my right I can see past the barn to the foals in the field, the sun behind them lighting them with outlines of fire; the filly, part Chincoteague, has winter plumage like a Persian lamb. Beyond the foals I see the clean rows of blueberry bushes in whose honor this farm is named, and amongst whose sweet abundance the youngest senior editor of this journal and his bride have been known to sing madrigals.