quite contrary…

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? ~ Mary Oliver
 
When Mary asked what we’d
do with our wild and precious
lives I’m quite sure she wasn’t
prodding us to the heroic but
rather to the awake, two very
different answers.
A fly on the wall of Mary’s life
is grounds for the magnificat
after which she no doubt steps
outside to fall down in fields of
green to idly pray.
We hail her highly favored but
Mary’s summer stations chill
us in their utter disregard for
our scaled visions. 
 
 

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2 Comments

  1. Amber Haines (@amberrunsamuck) on April 12, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    my favorite of all favorites

    One day, I left Kimpell Hall hating my pursuit of an MFA, wondering why I’d beat myself with such ridiculous workshops.

    I walked down a steep hill, and a friend walked with, and without warning she held out her hand and said “Who made the world?!” It startled me, and if I remember correctly, she followed with “Who made the swan and the black bear?”

    And her reader voice came on, and we just kept walking, and I watched her hand like a grasshopper was really there, God in the small and in the unknowing.

    • thebeautifuldue on April 12, 2012 at 3:15 pm

      Thanks, Amber…I hear that quote all the time, usually as a springboard for cultural/personal heroics of some sort, and I always think ‘that’s not what Mary meant.’ To live lost in the grand ‘Who’ calls for the bravery of the narrow way…

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