The Power of Connect
By Kate Cheney Chappell

I first started bringing poetry to meetings at Tom’s of Maine 20 years ago, at our company-wide gatherings and Board of Directors meetings. Now, we start most meetings with a poem or a simple question that grounds us in being human before taking on our leadership roles and tackling the agenda. A Connect Exercise helps people to connect with the goodness that is in all of us.

Connect exercises save time during the meeting because people tend to lose their tensions and listen to one another’s experiences, ideas, or opinions. People tend to lose their worries about the meeting and instead find their commonality, which makes for a great and productive meeting.

I have provided you with a poem and an accompanying reflection that you can use as a Connect Exercise during a meeting or as a group exercise. As an individual, you can read the poem and find a colleague or friend to discuss your thoughts and reflections. You may also consider using these questions as meeting starters:

• What is one good thing you have going for you today?
• Do you have a pet (or want one) and what kind of relationship do you have with that pet?
• What did you do over the weekend that allowed you to connect with nature?

Connect Exercise: The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is one of today’s great poets and writers who connect us with the natural world and the goodness to be found there. He writes eloquently about human relationships that connect us to each other and the deep well of goodness in our hearts. I highly recommend his poetry, as well as his many novels, such as Hannah Coulter and Jayber Crow. He lives and farms in his native Kentucky.

Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” speaks to a craving I have to be in the presence “of wild things/ who do not tax their lives with forethought/ of grief.” We humans seem to be good at stirring up and anticipating a lot of grief. The creatures in Berry’s poem show us a different way.

1. Read the poem once. Read it aloud to yourself, or to a friend. Listen for the lines that seem to be written for you. Say them aloud or write them in your journal. One way to help the poem sink in is to write it out in your non-dominant hand.
2. Consider journaling about the following questions:

• Do I “go in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be”? What am I most afraid of? Of what do I despair?
• The poet seeks out creatures and aspects of the natural world as an antidote to despair and fear: the wood drake, the great heron, still water, stars. What are they doing? (e.g., the wood drake “rests in his beauty on the water”) Is there something to teach me here about being in this world? Notice the language the poet uses for finding peace: “I come into”, not “I take” or “I get”, but a sense of entering into the peace.
• Do I “tax my life with forethought of grief”? Are there other animals or natural places that have sustained me? Name them. Go there in your mind’s eye.
• What keeps me from resting “in the grace of the world”? What keeps me from being “free”?

3. Take it into dialogue. Share these thoughts with a friend or colleague. Ask your partner to read the same poem and share his or her thoughts with you on a “poetry date.”
4. What two things can you do to connect with nature, just for today?

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 and 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.

Wendell Berry
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
(Counterpoint Press 1999)