The Mosaic

The Summer Day - by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

I’ve been revisiting Mary Oliver the last two weeks as part of my morning devotion, and while this is perhaps one her most popular poems, it’s also my favorite. I feel both challenged to do something of meaning with my life and encouraged to just be idle and blessed. It reminds me of another poem of hers in which she writes: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Wherever you are today, may you find opportunities to make meaning with your life, but may you also remember that a meaningful life isn’t one where you walk on your knees for a hundred miles in the desert. A meaningful life is simply one that pays attention. One that knows how to be idle and blessed. And one that knows the beauty of loving what it loves.

Love you all,
Pastor Victoria