In times of violence

When I despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and children’s life 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.

-- Wendell Berry

To live under siege,

with the equilibrium and tranquility of peace, 

to prevent the spring of my being from being polluted

by the bitter fruit of the climate of violence, 

to hold and re-hold the moral initiative of my own action 

and to seek the experience of community, 

all of this 

to whatever extent it has been possible to achieve it, 

is to walk through a door that no one can shut.

— Howard Thurman