How To Do Something Marvelous and “Not Productive” With This Weekend
Hey folks – just a reminder that, as has been our practice for some time, we will not have a gathering on this long weekend. The thinking behind that choice is that while there is no substitute for being in the same room at the same time, there is also no substitute for stepping away from that and into a different space; one where we encounter aspects of mystery in ways that being inside a building don’t facilitate. I’ve included the well-known Mary Oliver poem “The Summer Day” in this email for inspiration. The last two lines are the ones most often quoted (” Tell me, what is it you plan to do, with your one wild and precious life?”), but the hinge of the poem is really the convention-challenging question that comes two lines earlier. “Tell me, what else should I have done?”.
In a world full of “should”, “must” and “ought to have”, Oliver offers us the potentially revolutionary idea that those messages might be worth reconsidering, and one great way to do that is to be “idle and blessed“. I recognize that not everyone has the opportunity or perhaps capacity to do this in the ways that Oliver illustrates in this poem. With that in view, what can I do, what can you do, this long weekend, to hit “stop” for even a few moments to be present to the wonders around us, wherever we are, and to ponder the mystery that keeps it all spinning? Here’s the poem. I’ll see you back indoors next Sunday. 🙂
Peace,
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 down 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?
+ Mary Oliver