February 3: "I Happened to be Standing," Sunflowers, Prayer

Mary Oliver thinks about prayer . . . 

I Happened to be Standing

by:  Mary Oliver

I don't know where prayers go,

     or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep

     half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it

     crosses the street?

The sunflowers?  The old black oak

     growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world,

     along the shore or under the trees,

with my mind filled with things

     of little importance, in full

self-attendance.  A condition I can't really

     call being alive.

Is a prayer a gift, a petition,

     or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep.  Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing

just outside my door, with my notebook open,

which is the way I begin every morning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing.

He was positively drenched in enthusiasm.

I don't know why.  And yet, why not.

I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe

or whatever you don't.  That's your business.

But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be

     if it isn't a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.

I love the idea that everything and everyone prays--sunflowers and trees and sleeping cats.  Walking along the shores of Lake Superior, the waves slapping against the shore is a prayer.  The ice on my roof, dripping and sliding in the sun, is a prayer.  Me, sitting at a pipe organ and making music, is a prayer, and me with a pen and my journal (like Oliver), is a prayer, too.

People may think it's strange, but I always feel closest to my Higher Power when I'm writing.  Perhaps it's because I find it so easy to let go of all the other distractions in my life when I'm scribbling words on a page.  Of course, I've been writing since I was very young, so it's second nature to me.  I can easily go to a deeper place when I put pen to paper.  Because it's a part of who I am.

Prayer, as Oliver says, can be petition.  It can also be joy and lament.  An expression of gratitude.  Or a recognition of something beautiful.  Or terrible.  Ever since I can remember, I've always wondered what Christ looked like when he prayed.  Did he glow like marble in moonlight?  Or sweat blood?  Maybe he levitated, arms splayed, head thrown back--a dress rehearsal for his crucifixion.  

Or maybe he was like Oliver, listening to a thrush singing in the olive trees every morning.  Because isn't that what prayer really is--an act of paying attention?  Christ was a poet, watching, observing the praying world.  Sometime, the world rejoices.  Other times, it weeps.  Begs and sings psalms.  

Poets embrace mystery without the messy struggle to explain and quantify and dissect.  Sunflowers blaze,  The old black oak gets older.  So does the opossum.  Cats nap in pools of golden sunlight.  And it's all sacred.  Unknowable.  Beautiful.  Prayer.  Poem.

Saint Marty sitting at his laptop, typing this blog post--even that is prayer.