Stop and Notice Your Life
In our world of busyness and myriad responsibilities, we can stop and smell the roses. But do we? Sometimes the chatter in our heads or on our phones blocks out true life, becomes about everything but what it should be. Not that some of our day to day isn’t important, but when we consider the limited amount of time we have on the planet, it would be better to calm swirling thoughts and focus on one thing: life. Just plain ordinary life—the breathing in and out, the desire to love and be loved. The basic reason as to why we still get up every day, why we keep on going. Life.
Poet Mary Oliver writes:
Every day I’m still looking for God and I’m still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds. Certainly in the oceans,
in the islands that lay in the distance continents of ice, countries of sand
each with its own set of creatures and God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it’s late, for all of us, and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on burning the world as we go.
WHY THIS POST...
I burned up my weekend with family and friends, with my garden, flower arrangements and a good book. In the next few days my husband and I will be doing something momentous for his health that requires a night in the hospital. Writing will take a backseat, living, loving will be everything. (And I have some good books to read!)
For my mother and a dear friend, I wrote a blog post entitled: Songs Can be Prayers. I picked the Beach Boys, GOD ONLY KNOWS, because surely my mother’s life meant everything in forming mine and so I wanted to sing out:
God only know where I’d be without you.
I also picked: “If God Made You” by FIVE FOR FIGHTING, because of this verse:
I can’t say what I might believe
But if God made you he’s in love with me. (That’s true of my husband also.)
But today, it’s Mary Oliver’s poetry, though truly the lyrics above are also poetry.
Oliver writes: The man who has many answers, is often found in the theatres of information where he offers, graciously, his deep findings.While the man who has only questions, to comfort himself, makes music.
LET’S MAKE MUSIC! LET’S READ POETRY!
Yes, we all need to do that, to live our lives outloud, as Anna Quindlen has said, to make our own music. So today, in the blur and craziness of our current world-climate, stop. Ask yourself: what does life mean to me? How am I living it, cherishing it, expanding it? Am I able to sit with myself, inside my mind and contemplate the most precious gift, my life? Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it whatever. It’s an action that needs to happen. It’s the one my husband and I have been focussing on. If one definition of prayer is a request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship, then certainly in your life today, I hope you will either see, hear or feel one.
I HAVE DECIDED by Mary Oliver
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not taking a vacation.
Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.
Are you following me?
Poems taken from A THOUSAND MORNINGS Mary Oliver, 2012
photo by Me.
SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave
(Visited 12 times, 1 visits today)
