Happy New Year to You!

Happy New Year to you, dear readers and friends! I wish you all the best for 2014. May you find peace and joy in each day.

 

Tree stump at Mountain Lake. November 28, 2013.

“Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.”

― Mary Oliver

Our place

Note: The quotations in this post are from the poem, “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. To read the entire poem, go here.

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.”

 

Snake skin left behind in our yard.

 

Yellow leaves among the green.

Blue feather left behind in the yard.

Raindrops on blades of grass.

A bit of moss.

Bloom.

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

What helps you feel connected to the rest of creation? How important is it to you to feel connected?

Meditation lessons



Chase Bird



Soft, slow music, no words. A cat purring his own music. Meditation.

The other evening, I did all the right things. I made myself a mug of tea. I spread out my notebook, pen and mug on the dining room table. I made myself ready to sit, think, record.

I got sidetracked. A cat wanted my attention.

So I sat down on the couch with Chase Bird and turned on the TV, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to watch something mindless until I could get to my real goal of the evening, meditation.

Larry had used the TV last, and I discovered he had left it on one of those music channels that come with the satellite service.

Quiet instrumental music. I liked it and decided to listen for a few minutes.

Chase moved back and forth, first sitting on my lap, then kneading his bed beside me, then back to my lap. Back and forth.

I scratched his ear and neck and talked to him about the pretty music, and he purred loudly. He finally settled down on my lap.

Soft, slow music, no words. A cat purring his own music. Meditation.

The answers are already there.

Like the line in Mary Oliver’s poem “Thirst”:

“I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons.”

What do you discover when you get quiet and still?

Learning: The power of poetry

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration started by the American Academy of Poets in 1996.

A friend of mine suggested sharing bits of poetry on Facebook during the month, and that got me thinking about other ways I could celebrate poetry and what it means to me.

Why poetry?

I’ve written before on this blog about my love of Mary Oliver’s poetry and the peace and calmness it brings me.

I have always enjoyed reading poetry, and even wrote a lot of it years ago.

I love words, and each word is important in a poem. The entire meaning of the poem can turn on one word and its definition and connotations.

Beyond that, great poets reach into their souls for their words and in turn have the possibility of touching others.

Reading poetry centers me. It’s harder for me to pay attention to the racing thoughts of anxiety when I’m caught up in the cadence of a poem.

Certainly reading poetry is a viable choice for me when I’m trying to redirect my attention away from compulsive urges that go along with obsessive-compulsion disorder.

And many a poem has offered me hope when I’ve been sunk in depression.

Poetry adds beauty and insight to my life, and that’s a good thing for anyone, not just those who suffer from OCD, depression and other anxiety disorders.

Let’s celebrate!

The website for National Poetry Month provides 30 suggestions on ways for individuals and the community to celebrate poetry. Here are some of my favorites:

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day. This day is April 26. You are invited to carry a favorite poem in your pocket and share it with others.

I didn’t want to wait until April 26. I carried a poem in my pocket today. I liked reaching into my pocket and remembering the poem and reciting it to myself. It was an Emily Dickinson poem that reflects the power of words:

“A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.”

Read a book of poetry. I plan to revisit some poets I haven’t read for a while, and look for new ones.

Memorize a poem. I love memorizing poems. They are available to me whenever I need solace, encouragement or a bit of beauty.

Start a commonplace book. According to the website, commonplace books are personal anthologies. You copy favorite poems and quotations into the notebook. These notebooks “can be a source of enjoyment and solace, reminding the keeper of favorite books and poems, and can even become family heirlooms.”

I’ve done some of this in my journals, but I plan to begin devoting one journal to my favorite poems.

Integrate poetry and technology. This involves including poetry as part of your email signature, on your voice mail message and on social media like Facebook and Twitter.

I plan to share a bit of poetry every day on my Facebook page. It will keep me reading, and, I hope, share some beauty with others.

Write a letter to a poet. I’ve never done this. But I’d like to show some appreciation to poets who have touched my life in a positive way.

What is your relationship with poetry? How does reading poetry affect you? Who are your favorite poets? What poem would you carry in your pocket? Do you write poetry?

Mary Oliver: a gift

One of my favorite writers of any genre, and my favorite poet, is Mary Oliver.

She is an American poet who writes about animals, trees, flowers, ponds, God, death, meaning and so many other things.

I have reread her poems many times—not in the OCD way of rereading, but for new insights and inspirations.

Her poetry—any great poetry—is like that. I can return again and again and find another layer, another meaning.

I don’t remember how I first came to read Oliver’s work. I have degrees in English and taught writing and literature many years ago, but I don’t remember my first exposure to her.

I do remember going to a reading that she gave when she was a writer-in –residence at Sweet Briar College.

It was such a wonderful experience. The room was packed, and she looked so small and frail at the front, but her reading was powerful. That’s where I first heard her poem, “Wild Geese.”

I have memorized the poem over the years, and when I’m anxious and my thoughts are racing and there seems no hope in slowing them down, I recite the poem to myself and it helps to calm me.

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

-from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

I’m still trying to figure out the full meaning of that last line, even after all these years.

The words that end that poem are some of the most comforting I know:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

-from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

I’ve memorized some of her other poems, too. One of my goals is to memorize more of her work so her inspiration is literally just a thought away.

I think what calms me are her ideas, her questions, her deep connections to nature and her beautiful word choices. And I feel like she speaks to me and for me in so many ways.

I finally came to realize that when I read or recite her poetry from memory, I am really praying.

I have found her poetry to be an integral part of my attempts to pray and to meditate, and I expect it always will be.

I do have to be careful not to recite the lines by rote and forget about the meaning. Memorizing a new poem usually helps me with that.

One of the poems I want to memorize is the first one found in her volume of poetry “Thirst.”

“Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.”

-from “Messenger,” by Mary Oliver

   I’ll end this post by writing about “When Death Comes,” an Oliver poem I memorized a long time ago and still recite some nights.

   In the poem, she writes about the inevitability of death and how she wants to face it “full of curiosity.”

“And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular. . . ”

-from “When Death Comes,” by Mary Oliver