Monster with Book

I just finished my first year of seminary, and so many things about it blew my mind. I read a bunch of books about Buddhism, art, how to subvert the empire with an alternative community devoted to loving-kindness (in the first century), life, death, consciousness, impermanence, eternity and how to make meaning. A professor shared this poem with us last semester in a class about communication in the present moment. I'm keeping it taped above my desk to remind me to pay attention.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?