Mysteries, Yes
by: Mary Oliver
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the 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.
This poem is all about choosing astonishment over answers. Oliver distrusts people who have the kind of self assurance that leaves no room for mystery. Think about the first time someone told you that Santa wasn't real. It may have been your mother or father, but, more likely, it was a friend/classmate/peer who was trying to make you feel childish and stupid. Who was trying to assert some power over you.
People who have all the answers bore me at the very least and piss me off in the extreme. Don't give me the science of light and refractions and atmospheres if I comment on the brilliant blue of the sky. Tell me that you can see your father's eyes looking down on you from above. If I'm sitting in a hospital room with my dying sister, I'm not interested in the biology of agonal breathing. I want to hold her hand and tell her that mom and dad are waiting for her.
Mystery is more comforting. Mystery helps us live with the unanswerable and frightening. I think that's why I ended up becoming a poet instead of a computer programmer. You may be surprised to know that I have undergraduate minors in math and computer science. Four credits away from a BA in computer science. I took classes in abstract algebra and calculus, artificial intelligence and computer graphic design. I could write a line of code with the best of 'em.
However, I finally realized--after about four years of classes and a nervous breakdown (literally)--that I didn't need to know all the answers. I preferred to be dumbfounded on a midnight beach by Lake Superior under a curtain of auroras than reading about electrically charged particles entering the Earth's thermosphere at very high speeds. Mystery over the mundane. Poetry over Pascal.
I have never regretted this decision. To this day, I prefer moments of breathless wonder versus news about Marjorie Taylor Greene's latest display of stupidity and bigotry. That's doesn't mean I live in ignorance. That means my life is made richer when grace enters into the equation.
Poetry does that for me. Reading poetry. Writing poetry. Listening to poetry. Grace and grace and grace. For other people, it's music or visual art or theater or novels that do the trick. Some people even find grace in mathematics. Here's the thing, though, whatever the source of grace: it isn't about answering questions. Grace is about being human in the rubble of the world.
Saint Marty doesn't have all the answers, and he's okay with that, as long as there's a poem by Sharon Olds or Mary Oliver close by.
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