To Begin With,
The Sweet Grass
by: Mary Oliver
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say--behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.
2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life--just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.
And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.
5.
We do one thing or another, we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.
6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?
And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure--
your life--
what would do for you?
7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
This is all that Mary Oliver knows, boiled down, condensed, and concentrated: first, learn to love yourself; second, forget that love; third, learn to love the world.
That's it.
As children, we learn fairly early to love ourselves. The universe is all about our needs--our pains and hungers and joys and sorrows. We are gravity and sun. That's the way things work for the first few years of our lives.
The rest of our time is spent unlearning this narcissism. Unfortunately, some people never do. Those individuals become serial killers, owners of Facebook and Twitter, or Presidents of the United States who start insurrections.
Loving the world is a harder lesson to learn. Because it means placing other needs ahead of our own--climate, world hunger, refugees, poverty, intolerance, to name a few. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It's a difficult transition to make because it is a paradigm shift, from child to adult, immaturity to maturity.
I've been teaching college undergraduates for almost 30 years. I've read more college composition papers than I care to count. Most of the time, those essays reflect a developing understanding of the world. There are dead grandmother essays, where the writer is coming to terms with mortality. There are breakup essays, where the writer is grappling with cruelty and rejection. There are loss of faith essays, where the writer rails against organized religion. Then there are nature essays and homeless essays and abuse essays, where the writer starts putting these global issues into the context of their lives.
It takes some time to reach that Mary Oliver stage in life--when the world's needs replace the need for the newest iPhone iteration. That kind of enlightenment is a lifelong process. There is a Zen proverb that says, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." We are all going to be chopping wood and carrying water until the day we shuffle off this mortal coil.
Every day, I try to chop the wood and carry the water. By taking care of the needs of the world (and the people in it), I'm taking care of myself, as well. Enlightenment is like moving into a new house. There isn't just one big lightbulb to be switched on. It's more like a series of lights. You move from room to room, turning on lights, discovering each new space.
I'm old enough to have flipped on a lot of light switches in my life. Yet, I'm still learning things, about myself and my place in the world. Each blade of sweet grass or incoming tide or piece of bread is an opportunity to become a child of the clouds and of hope, as Oliver says.
As he gets older and possibly wiser, Saint Marty gets younger and younger, in attitude and outlook.
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