Our one wild and precious life

Much appreciation to my friend Jon for sharing another thought-provoking piece. The “speaker” in this poem is asking us to contemplate a number of deeper topics. Creationism, prayer, and (while not explicitly stating it in these terms) finding the beauty of God in the simply complex natural world around us.

I think for me the critical underlying theme to what Mary Oliver wrote is that we humans are connected on a deep, spiritual level because nobody knows for certain the “answers”. We believe and hope and have faith in redemption, forgiveness, and eternal life all delivered through God’s love. But it is through fellowship with laypeople and religious leaders, through individual and collective study, and in deep prayer that we gain enlightenment into the Word and the Truth of God’s plan.

I encourage you to find time every day to stop, reflect, pray, share, and love.

The Summer Day

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