This past week I received an email from a friend with whom I spent three years in seminary. Until a fiftieth reunion last year, we hadn’t seen each other since graduation. I was reminded how often back then he and I shared frequencies regarding life’s conundrums and possibilities.
Arriving last week, my friend’s message was a brief but powerful outcry over our brokenness as a species. Examples he cited from this year’s forty days of Lent epitomize our capacity for treating each other inhumanely, a morbid prelude to the crucifixion of “Good” Friday.
Efforts to rationalize all that is going on in our country and around the world seem futile, especially if one is attached to outcomes. Believing an Easter experience is the Christian response to a Good Friday, my friend re-framed the quandary by suggesting we turn to another realm of truth-seeking – the wisdom embedded in our place among the mysteries of the earth and its cycles. He shared two poems by Mary Oliver, one of which is below.
Here in rural New Hampshire it is lambing season for some farmers. Is the timing with Passover and Easter this year just coincidence?
Mysteries, Yes
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous / to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing / in the mouths of lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever / in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will / never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
Scars of damage / to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
Mary Oliver
I am reading the Gloria Steinem Book “My Life on the Road”, and found a connected quote: “We have to stop generalizing about ‘The American People’ as if we are one homogeneous lump. I’m also now immune to politicians who say, “I’ve traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and know…” I’ve traveled more than any of them,and I don’t know.”
Keep on Thinking, Kim
Thanks for contributing, Kim. Steinem’s quote seems to echo Mary Oliver’s line: “Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.”
Thank you
I sometimes let the trees of disappointment block me from seeing the joys the forest holds. Thanks for reminding me that there is always astonishment to be had (family reminds me as well) we just have to be open to its existence. Sometimes it seems easier to complain, attack, see the glass as half empty. Why is that? Thank you for sharing your friend’s and Mary Oliver’s insights. She’s able to see (and helps me to see) that the glass is always half full, even when it’s half empty. I suppose it has to be, right, especially if I want to experience joy, if I want to survive and thrive, even. Your friend’s and Oliver’s observations are a testament.
An Easter gift.
Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks for the gift of your response. Sending blessings to you and your family.