the miracle is to walk on earth in a sacred way as a free and easy wanderer of wonder breathing in the rhythm of the waves  dwelling deeply in the present moment feeling every wild cell humming with abandon in the inner quiet of the stillpoint… in honor of the 3rd anniversary of Mary Oliver’s transition, i walk in silence with Mary in the deep woods living the quest ions she inspires me to contemplate…

“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 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 goes on to answer by saying…

“And I say to my heart:

Rave on.”

and

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it”

in her much loved, Wild Geese, she is the words above and the words below telling about her life all the while supporting and comforting us as we walk home with her…

“You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. / Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. / Meanwhile the world goes on. / Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain / are moving across the landscapes, / over the prairies and the deep trees, / the mountains and the rivers. / Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, / are heading home again. / Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.”

let us close with Mary’s closing words…

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and

real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

thank you, Mary, beloved sherpa of the natural world for devotedly sharing your wanderings in wonder…