look deeply

Mary Oliver gives us three “lessons for living.”  They are 1) pay attention, 2) be astonished, 3) share your astonishment.

                     Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for our Times

 

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?

                     Mary Oliver, from The Summer Day

____________________________

 

We, yes we human creatures, are part of God’s joyous and loving self expression.

We, along with the mountain, frosted with fresh snow,

and the delicate fawn, leaping through the fall grass,

and the crisp wind of fall,

 

are God’s self portrait!

 

We dwell in the midst of the wonderfully sacred.

We are wondrously sacred.

 

This is a fierce truth we so often forget.

 

On most days our eyes are blurred as if by fog.

We do not see clearly, but instead find our selves stumbling through the mist of our own disappointment and limitations,

muttering to ourselves, cursing the darkness.

 

But we are surrounded by marvelous things, we are surrounded by marvelous people (yes, we are!), if we but pay attention and allow ourselves to be astonished.

 

What am I looking for, on this fine day that has not yet

emerged from the darkness?

 

What am I looking for in those people I will meet in Safeway,

or in those whom I will visit or call?

 

What I am looking for I will find.

 

If I am looking for enemies I will find them.

If I am looking for deplorables I will find them.

If I am looking for threats, they will be there too.

 

If I am looking for Sacred Children, they will emerge from the mist.

I suspect that Jesus saw only beloved Children of God.

Even hanging there from the cross.

Children of God.

Children of God.

Children of God.

 

“God forgive them”.

“God, how I love them.”

 

This day I want to look deeply.

I want to be astonished by Love.

For it is everywhere.

 

And most of all, I want to pass it on.

 

This love.

This praise.

This joy.

This hope…

that comes to those who see