“And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness -- the beauty and mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books -- can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

(Mary Oliver, in “Staying Alive,” from Upstream)

Outside, it is a balmy 26 degrees -- balmy in Minnesota, that is. A two-inch mix of snow and ice lays on the ground, and at this late time of day, splintered sunlight runs longwise across the forest floor. Day is waning. The sparrows and towhees are oblivious to cold, apparently, their thin legs pattering about the base of the feeder.

Yesterday, we saw three deer grazing behind the fence, in gray winter coats. Even at 100 paces from us and behind windows, one knew of our presence, alert to our movements. This morning my wife saw their plot: overnight, they scaled our slight fence, stole unhindered to our feeders, and purloined the birds’ Sunday rations. In two places just inside the fence, a confusion of hoof prints marked their point of entry, one where they sailed easily over a pile of unused slate, a daunting span.

And now the sun has slipped low on the horizon, the backyard in shadow but my westward facing window ablaze, momentarily -- all of this, a few minutes reflection, an “antidote to confusion.” I am no different from you; I have too much to do, too many things jumbled in my mind, too much left undone. Creation is a calming balm. The sun comes up and then goes down, and the next day God says, with the smile of a child, “Do it again.”

I haven’t really been outside in now two days, what with all the ice and frigid temperatures. So, I am limited to what I can see out my window and what I can see through my books. I finished Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious and Grace, the latest installment of his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. In it Mma Ramotswe, the traditionally built woman detective of Gaborone, Botswana, solves a mystery with her usual grace, and as does all the books in the series this tale does not ignore the fact that evil exists in the world but lays great stress on that which is good, true, and beautiful --- and, in this one, gives a mighty lesson about the healing power of forgiveness for a wrong done in the distant past, one unredressed. When a sometimes employee, Mr. Polopetsi is helped out of a serious, even criminal dilemma, he says “I do not deserve such a good friend, Mma. You are like Jesus Christ himself.” Or, as he said upon her denial, “Maybe you are like his sister, Mma.” Reading that book I was for a time in a better Africa.

But finishing it, I picked up a book I bought six years ago but which has lain unread under my nightstand, the place where books go that you intend to read but never get to and, in the end, may be forgotten. Not this time. Peter Godwin’s The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, is a sad contrast to the peaceable society of Precious and Grace. Godwin is a white Rhodesian, a journalist, and I had previously read his memoir of the fall of Zimbabwe into dictatorial hands, entitled When a Crocodile Eats the Sun. I’m not through it. It is a chronicle of the destruction of a beautiful, productive country at the hands of one man, Robert Mugabe, who (I checked) remains in power at the age of 92. But reading these books end to end is also an antidote to confusion: in them I have a fresh sense of the stark difference between good and evil, which is also an “antidote to confusion.”

Behind the fence two squirrels chase each other in circles in what to my eyes looks like play. One sparrow tittered at another, who flitted off, for now, in what looks like a spat over food or turf. The sun, far on the horizon, flirts with descent yet, in moments while I watch, drops from sight, like an over-zealous actor pulled from the stage.

I might just take a walk, in the otherness of book or field. If it’s cold, I’ll wrap myself in a coat of wool or memory and be off, returning numbed by mystery.