The Peace of Wild Things

  Yesterday, as my friend and I drove his truck from Pinawa to Winnipeg, we marvelled at the construction going on just north of the perimeter.  "Can you believe they have a car wash, all the way out here?", I exclaimed.  "Well, seems like they are building new residences...." he said.  "So a car wash comes first (no bus service out here, must be for car owners only), then what, a grocery store?".  "I think they put in the SuperStore and Walmart next", he said.  Can you imagine that, it's not a "grocery store" anymore, its the two biggest chains in Canada.  I processed that for a few minutes, the spaces of land dug up and poured with concrete, and told him, "God creates earth, man creates Walmarts",
 
  Since we both acknowledge the need for clothing and food at lower prices, being inner city folk....we analyzed the pro's and con's of Walmart, Superstore, Giant Tiger (no parking, people walk at least 5 city blocks to get there or take the bus), the new No Frills and the manager there (who says people leave frozen products around the store and he looses money), and then (as always) our hopes and dreams to eventually live on the land, grow food, hunt, share and take care of what God made....creation, His version of Walmart, and doesn't require credit cards.

   The tension of living in the inner city and taking time to tend to our concrete exhausted souls in places that restore the soul (Whiteshell, lately Oak Hammock marsh in spring) is becoming more and more pronounced.  This morning I woke up to a robin singing, crows, sparrows, squirrels...along with traffic down Sherbrook and the police helicopter blades whirring.  I am so glad I didn't hear the fire engines roaring down Maryland to attend to the fire down past Portage at 3 am.  Watching my compost decompose, my little garden plot unveiling itself and the chive plant starting to peek out is a taster for my land starved soul.

     This morning, Earth Day (?) I have to decide....do I go to my workshop and prep the walls for painting in the smelly, basement room that is to be our work office or go to the neighborhood garbage clean up....both Kingdom things to do, renovating and improving a boarding house basement and taking care of the concrete places and urban grassland called boulevards.  Decisions, decisions.  And then I read "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendall Berry, relating to every word and the line, "I come to the peace of the wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief".....if I don't clean the sidewalk it will look like I don't care about the environment, if I don't wash those grimy walls today, it will look like I don't care about smelly boarding house basements.

   I know there is more to it then that, the tension eases when I think that whatever I do... the still water, the rest I look for is in front of me even here.  Bird sounds, neighbors connecting, clean smell of a job well done, the burden lifts and I am allowed an Earth Day.  And believe me, Walmart cannot compare to that.