Evidence

I.

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

2.

There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.

How old pain, for example, can stall us at the threshold of function….

Still friends, consider stone, that is without the fret of gravity, and water that is without anxiety. 

And the pine trees that never forget their recipe for renewal. 

And the female wood duck who is looking this way and that way for her children. And the snapping turtle who is looking this way and that way also. This is the world. 

And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles. 

3. 

I ask you again: if you have not been enchanted by this adventure--your life--what would do for you? 

And, where are you, with your ears bagged down as if with packets of sand? Listen. We all have much more listening to do. Tear the sand away. And listen. The river is singing. …

For myself, I have walked in these woods for

More than forty years, and I am the only

thing, it seems, that is about to be used up.

Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the

Foreseeable future, be used up.

First, though, I want to step out into some

fresh morning and look around and hear myself

crying out:  "The house of money is falling! The house of money is falling! The weeds are rising! The weeds are rising!"

In this day today, do you imagine there will be much evidence? Evidence for what?

Consider the lilies then and the birds as Mary does.  She's been reading the Christian Scriptures that one! (Matthew 6:25-34)

I read it much like she does.  There is so much contradiction in the passage, which points to the opposed tensions in life, we are left to turn to the infallible, but which can be hidden. So we go through our days as sleuths to discover. What you ask?  More importantly, how,  when we know that we are marching towards the point of being used up?  Or like the ducklings, hunted by pain for the good of the world?

I don't have the answer of how we listen for the evidence all around us.  

I only know that beauty is everywhere. It's my job to find it and praise the world accordingly, and to respond to the glory of every being with in the world, which are also within me.

What evidence do you long for today?

I Want to Write Something So Simply

I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think—
no, you will realize—
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your heart
had been saying.

I think that Mary can check this off her list of accomplishments. She does write so simply that it feels as if I am with her as she walks with Percy along the shore or meanders through a meadow marveling at the flowers.  Of course, in her very writing she distinguishes herself from all others. The words themselves, captured permanently in time say "I" and "you."  It is up to the reader then to deconstruct what is written so we can hear "Thou" and "We" instead. After a year's rising with Mary I believe that my neural circuitry as rewired to do this translation work when I pick up a book of her poems, see the road kill, or write her to you in this blog.  We are all love and pain, life and death, and it's all good.

                

What and how can you write simply about today?

Crow Says

There is corn in the field,

what should I think of else?

Anyway, my thoughts are all feathery.

I prefer simple beak talk.

Maybe it's having wings.

It does make a difference.

As for that business about brothers,

of course I'm concerned that we

share the corn, to the extent

that I get my plenty.

As for later, how can "later" exist?

When old crows die I don't cry,

I peck at their silly, staring eyes

and open my wings and fly to

wherever I want to. I've forgotten

both father and mother,

even the pile of sticks

in which I was born. Well, maybe

now and again, and mostly in winter,

I have strange, even painful ruminations.

When you're hungry and cold

it's hard to be bold, so I sulk,

and I have dreams sometimes, in which

I remember the corn will come again,

and vaguely then I feel that I am almost feeling

grateful, to something or other.

Just yesterday I read about the emotional and social lives of crows and ravens.  They are quite smart.  They express complex emotions to others through voice and feather, use tools, and recognize human faces perhaps better than we can.  In addition, writes William Hagmen, "They play, communicate, and have the capacity to deceive.  They're smarter than any cat and most children.  They have strong family values.  Johan McGowan, (author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens") equates it with our society, saying crows come closer to man than any other species studied, including primates. Crow society is family-based, he said. There's a single breeding pair that has offspring that don't leave right away and help raise the next batch of offspring, just like people. Relationships are maintained and individuals can join up with each other years later. Like us, crows have territories and they gather in communal places. When you see a number of crows gathering, he said, 'those aren't gangs of crows, they're typically family groups that are helping each other make a living.'"

So, if I am to take Mary literally here in her understanding of crows, she is off the mark.  Yet, is she really speaking of crows?  Maybe she means me, and you.  We think we are somehow different than other beings. We may not have wings, but we've got something especially primate about us that sets us apart.  We hoard the harvests from fields and forget about our brothers and sisters.  Sometimes, when hard times come our way we let go of control and give in to dreams of interdependence and even touch gratitude.

Winter is coming - our first day below 40 degrees and I'm bundled up writing this.  Outside my window a fish crow calls, telling me that there is beauty in the chaotic and bountiful field of our existence, if not in benefit directly coming my way but in loving and compassionate thoughts I share with all beings.

Why today should I think of anything else?

Why should you?

Summer Morning

Heart, I implore you,

it's time to come back from the dark,

it's morning, the hill are pink

and the roses whatever they felt

in the valley of night

are opening now

their soft dresses, their leaves

are shining. Why are you laggard?

Sure you have seen this a thousand times,

which isn't half enough. Let the world

have its way with you, luminous as it is

with mystery and pain-

graced as it is with the ordinary.

It is quite dark now. Election day has passed and soon I'll pick up the paper and wonder if we can ever have the kind of discourse that will bring peace and flourishing to our communities of mixed species. Compounding this I am reading a novel about the Columbine High School shootings. I wonder how we can move from blame and darkness when there is so much pain? My prayer in the graying dawn is for my heart to not give up and to stay engaged instead of painting the world with a brush laden with opaque and dull thoughts. I know of no way to guarantee the course of the heart in a day - except to give into the day where there will always be shadows and always be something illuminated, with a smile shining through it.

How has the ordinary graced your life?

The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist

Something has happened

To the bread

And the wine.

They have been blessed.

What now?

The body leans forward

To receive the gift

From the priest’s hand,

Then the chalice.

They are something else now

From what they were

Before this began.

I want

To see Jesus,

Maybe in the clouds

Or on the shore,

Just walking,

Beautiful man

And clearly

Someone else

Besides.

On the hard days

I ask myself

If I ever will.

Also there are times

My body whispers to me

That I have.

I admit that the idea for doing this blog on Mary Oliver’s poems came from the movie “Julie and Julia.” In that movie one character finds meaning by cooking one of Julia Child’s recepies a day and then blogs about it over a year’s time. In one part of the movie she gets into a section of the cooking book of foods she doesn’t like - Chaud-Froid. This is where you cook meats and then serve them cold in sauces or in gelatin. I wonder if in some ways I have hit my Chaud-Froid section of Mary Oliver’s poems.

It’s not that I mind the metaphors and symbols of the Christian church; I just miss the ample references to the nonhuman world. Mary has always been lovely that way. Every day I can get out of the human centered world and see that the interdependence that tree is bird is me is you. Yet, in all those earlier poems I noticed that they didn’t get to the human condition so much, the suffering, the death, the loss, and the injustice. I missed that she didn’t address that.

So here we are, a poem about a man who asked us to love our neighbors as ourselves, even in the midst of our great pain and hurting. Now that’s a recipe that may not be easy to make or consume, but worth trying none-the-less. What else is love for?

What is your relationship with Christianity?

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention - September 11, 2010

“As long as we are able to be extravagant we will be

Hugely and damply extravagant. Then we will drop

Foil by foil to the ground. This is our unalterable task,

And we do it joyfully.”

And they went on. “Listen,

The heart-shackles are not, as you think,

Death, illness, pain,

Unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

Lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, selfishness.”

Their fragrance all the while rising from their blind bodies, making me

Spin with joy.

Today is 9/11. It is not a day of lassitude. There is too much death and pain associated with this date, though last year the date seemed to slip by noiselessly. Not so this year, for we have in our own town the threat of a small congregation burning a Koran. The media response is spinning out of control, and the whole circus gives rise to more violence, hatred, and fear. In the crowds that may gather if this church goes through with it, I heard of a stealth plan. A group of people trained in non-violent communication hope to infiltrate the gathered and offer empathy where they may.

They, roses in the garden.

If ever there was a day to do so, let us breathe in the fragrance of beauty, so that we may breathe out joy.

Singapore - April 7, 2010

In Singapore, in the airport,

a darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women's restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something

in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach...

A poem should always have birds in it...

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees...

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and

neither could win...

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as shares down at her labor,

which is dull enough...

She does not work slowly , nor quickly, but like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life

And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop

and fly down to the river.

This probably won't happen.

But maybe it will.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn't.

Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

the light that can shine out of a life. I mean

the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

the way her smile was only for my sake: I mean

the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

Just as I was thinking of how Mary's poems are all saying the same thing and asking the same question (and of course they are, aren't they, just as the sun asks and answers the same thing in startlingly new ways every morning?), here she does something different, answers a different question in my mind, heals another part of my life, leads me to the broader resonance that her poems affirm. My soul breathes, "Finally!" My question is, like her one question, how do we love the world? An important corollary question for me, that has been feeling neglected in this book of poems to date, is how do we love the humans in our world? How do we love all that we are and including our expression in society that leaves beauty scrubbing ashtrays in public toilet bowls? How do we see light in war, in poverty, in gang leaders and in drug lords? This is the work of my life, to love the world of nature, including human nature. This driving passion is no more noble than the sharp tang of cigarettes and urine mixing in polluted rivers, or the refolding of a dirty cloth in the hands of others on any street, either in Singapore or Mexico City. The light that can shine out of our lives is in all our hands.

When have you been surprised by beauty in humans?

The Moths - March 31, 2010

There's a kind of white moth, I don't know

what kind, that glimmers

by mid-May

in the forest...

If you notice anything,

it leads you to notice

more and more...

I was always running around, looking

at this and that.

If I stopped

the pain

was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe

the world

can't be saved,

the pain was unbearable.

Finally, I had noticed enough.

All around me in the forest

the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering

in and out of the shadows?

You aren't much, I said

one day to my reflection

in a green pond,

and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight.

and burn

so brightly...

Mary is watching the moths, and who is noticing us? Who looks at us as so short lived, burning so brightly, and nurtured in the sweet abundance of the world out of which we metamorphosed? I could answer this that we humans notice one another, but is there not a greater Watcher? Life itself? And of course I ask, are we not life itself? The mirror held up to the sun?

If I don't notice my reflection in the pond, the pain can be unanswerable for I want to run around saving everything. When I slow down, and over the long years this has come somewhat naturally, I notice more and more that there perhaps isn't anything to save, only to notice. No action needed other than a grin, a smile.

In the movie, The Thin Red Line, the hero sees a baby parrot bombed out of a tree and says:

"Why is it that one man looks at a dying bird and sees unanswerable pain. Another man looks at the same birds and feels the glory, feels a smile shining through."

Where do you see your reflection in the world around you and what is your response to seeing yourself in the world? What do you notice today that you might not have noticed years before?

The Fish - March 8, 2010

The first fish

I ever caught

would not lie down

quiet in the pail

but flailed and sucked

at the burning

amazement of the air

and died

in the slow pouring off

of rainbows...

...and ate him. Now the sea

is in me: I am the fish, the fish

glitters in me..certain to fall

back to the sea. Out of pain,

and pain, and more pain

we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished

by the mystery.

In wonder this morning I marvel how Mary catches my heart when it comes to fish. These days I prefer to snorkel to gaze at a fish's rainbow. This image captures Mary's poem yesterday, "White Night" where she merges with life through floating in water, not hunting in water. In the past, the way I knew to see the rainbow covenant born in fish flesh, was to hunt them with pole and line. And to eat them. The desire to have the sea flow in me in form that my brain gets, that is to eat fish, has not lessened over the years of my vegetarian path. By opting to not eat fish, I have not achieved the lessening of pain, for the mystery and pain of the cycle of life still pries open my heart whether I partake or not. The mystery fills my heart with awe, anew, in reading this poem and images of fish glitter in my mind.

What comes to your mind and heart when you consider that you live through harm to other beings?

Three Poems for James Wright - February 5, 2010

1. Hearing of Your Illness

I went out

from the news of your illness

like a broken bone...

...Then I lay down in a rank and spring-sweet field...

...small creatures rustling about, living their lives

as they do, moment by moment.

I felt better, telling them about you.

They know what pain is, and they knew you,...

..They...

merely loved you and waited

to take you back...

...meanwhile not missing one shred of their own

assignments of song

and muscle-

what I learned there, so I

got up finally, with a grief

worthy of you, and went home.

2. Early Morning in Ohio

...I remember

what you said.

And think how somewhere in Tuscany

a small spider might eve now

be stepping forth, testing

the silks of her web, the morning air,

the possibilities; maybe even, who knows,

singing a tiny song.

3. The Rose

...the news came

that nothing

could come to you

in time

anymore

ever.

I put down the phone

and I thought I saw, on the floor of the room, suddenly,

a large box,...

...but what it was-the voice

of a small bird singing inside, Lord,

how it sang, and kept singing!

how it keeps singing!

in its deep

and miraculous

composure

There is a song behind death and grief, which seems we can only hear if we know the sorrow of our hearts as they beat with the rhythm of the world. All things singing, all things shining. I am hear to listen, to sing, and to be the mirror that reflects back all things shining. So clear is this note of life's passionate melody for me after reading this poem. Thank you Mary.

Do you hear a song behind your pain and grief?