The Gift
by: Mary Oliver
After the wind-bruised sea
furrowed itself back
into folds of blue, I found
in the black wrack
a shell called the Neptune--
tawny and white,
spherical,
with a tail
and a tower
and a dark door,
and all of it
no larger
than my fist.
It looked, you might say,
very expensive.
I thought of its travels
in the Atlantic's
wind-pounded bowl
and wondered
that it was still intact.
Ah yes, there was
that door
that held only the eventual, inevitable
emptiness.
There's that--there's always that.
Still, what a house
to leave behind!
I held it
like the wisest of books
and imagined
its travels toward my hand.
And now, your hand.
Oliver finds the Neptune and gives us its story as only she can--full of wisdom and astonishment. Everything and everyone in this world has a story, from the tiniest of seashells on a beach to the Himalayas. It's very easy to walk through a day without thinking of any of those stories. Let's face it, human beings are pretty self-absorbed creatures, myself included.
Perhaps that's why I like hanging around poets and writers. Poets and writers train themselves to tell stories that nobody else may notice or care about. In a poet's hands, a tiny shell on a beach suddenly becomes an astounding odyssey of survival akin to anything that Homer sang about. (Yes, I just used the word "akin." I'm a poet, so I'm allowed.) There's real power in storytelling, because it's difficult to dismiss the worth of anyone and anything if you know the "once upon a times."
This evening, I attended a session of singing bowls meditation. If you don't know that that is, don't feel bad. Until a couple years ago, I had never even heard the term before. Singing bowls are bowls made out of hammered metal that, when struck with a mallet, create a ringing and chiming. The sound creates vibrations that are supposed to heal and relax. When you have many of these bowls (and gongs) singing together in a space, it creates an energy difficult to describe.
The most amazing part of a singing bowls meditation is that the bowls make different sounds, depending on the people present. Each individual brings a unique story and energy to a place, and the bowls respond to that story/energy. The gentleman who led the meditation tonight told me a story.
Once upon a time, he was leading a singing bowls meditation at a local Episcopal church. He set up his bowls and gongs in the basement of the building at first, and they did their thing, singing and vibrating. But then he moved into the sanctuary of the church. When he began striking his instruments, the man said, "The energy was so powerful." The pastor of the church told him, "When you pray in a place for over 100 years, that prayer has to make a difference."
Think about that. All the sick and dying relatives. Griefs and joys. Baptisms and funerals and weddings. Christmases and Easters. All those stories swirling around you as you sit in a pew. When I attend Mass at my home church, I can sometimes still hear my mother's soprano voice above the organ, feel my father sitting in his place in the choir loft. Their stories are still there, the wisest of books, as Oliver says.
The singing bowls vibrate with those stories.
We should all do the same. The next time you see a homeless person sitting in a library or outside a gas station, remember that person has a story, just like you, full of happiness and heartache. When you see a dandelion growing on your lawn, think of the impossible process of photosynthesis that allows it to exist. Your story. My story. The dandelion's story. The homeless person's story. They're all chambers of the same Neptune shell. Chorusing and humming.
Saint Marty hopes you all sleep happily ever after tonight.
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