Quieting the Spirit

Quieting the Spirit

Swimming, One Day in August

by Mary Oliver

It is time now, I said,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be time, again,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.

I discovered this poem after an editor sent an image of a handmade card with a partial quote. This poem, at this time, is perfect for me

Like Mary Oliver, many things have been “pestering my heart” to the point of breaking. Most have to do with the current political scene in this country and its repercussions for democracy here and abroad, for all Americans, but especially for the poor and marginalized. I call my senators and representatives. When their voice message mailbox is full, I write emails. I donate to organizations that will help people directly or by filing lawsuits against unconstitutional or illegal actions taken by the current administration. 

But the most difficult thing for me to do is just what I need and what Mary Oliver says: “… the deepening and quieting of the spirit.” Unlike Oliver, I don’t live close to the sea. But when I have a chance, a long walk along the beach calms my spirit. It’s the rhythm, the timelessness of the ebb and flow. It’s the awareness of the immensity of creation, earth and beyond, that helps me settle into a sense of being a small part of something unimaginably larger than myself and of the Holy Presence that holds all. It helps me take a long view.

Woman walking along the beach

But as I say, I don’t live close to the ocean, so I try to do what I can do where I am. I have varying degrees of success.

When I sit in quiet prayer, my mind fills with worry and concerns. No matter how often I acknowledge them and let them go, they return. Far from quieting my spirit, the time often agitates it. Instead, I read the New Testament and focus on Jesus’s actions and those of the women and men who followed him. Jesus didn’t “win” in our common understanding of the word, at least in the short run. The oppressors did, crucifying him and persecuting his followers. Jesus didn’t promise an easy way, but in the big picture, Love overcomes all. The prayerful reading engages my mind and heart.

I walk and pay attention to what is around me. The gift of the season. The birdsong. The sun and clouds. Stepping outside on a clear night, I take in sky. The stars and planets are breathtaking, even in the city. 

I read poetry, novels, and spirituality and virtually gather with friends to share what spoke to us. Gathering is important and helps remind me that I am not alone facing these times.

This week, my daughter visited, and we went to the theater to watch A Complete Unknown about Bob Dylan. A 60’s folk singer, I loved the music and remembered the events and musicians. We came home and listened to Joan Baez while making and eating dinner. Then, at my daughter’s insistence, we pulled out my two guitars and sang the old songs. She washed dishes and I continued to play. 

Doing things that feed my spirit and bring joy helped me connect with my deeper self. We baked cinnamon rolls, brioche bread, and banana muffins. We cleared the table and painted. And sat up late into the night drinking tea, talking, and watching favorite reruns.

“Centering down,” as Howard Thurman said, can happen in other ways than sitting quietly in a chair or walking the beach. I have found that when I do enough of these things, I am better able to be quietly without becoming distraught. Without living in fear of a future that is not yet. However we do it, it is time for “… for the deepening and quieting of the spirit” and living as best we can in the present.

Source

“Swimming, One Day in August”: First published in Red Bird: Poems by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, 2008

With Gratitude for Mary Oliver

With Gratitude for Mary Oliver

September 10 was Mary Oliver’s birthday. It would have been her 89th. I thought of her that morning as I walked into my living room. The sun poured through the window over the buffet, flooding the plants, shells, and other treasures that live there with light.

Hello, sun in my face
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crochety—...

I recited her poem “Why I Wake Early.” It has become my morning prayer whenever the sun greets me by spreading its light over the chair and couch, painting the hardwood floor with yellow stripes reaching to the dining table at the other end of the room.

Mary Oliver is part of my morning reading, and in her honor, I treated myself with a few favorites. Years ago, when I first read it, “At the River Clarion” won my heart with the opening line: I don’t know who God is exactly. Yes. After years of listening, searching, and studying, I still say the same thing. Attention to creation provided hints to the poet. The river splashing across the stone where she sat. The stone itself. The mosses under the water. They spoke to her of holiness and the part of it all things are. Not a message quickly heard, she said, but one understood by being present to the moment, day by day by day.

In the poem, she wonders how one gets “to suspect such an idea,” being a tiny piece of God. Perhaps it’s as 20th century theologian Karl Rahner articulated: God’s enlivening presence within all from the start creates a desire for something beyond ourselves and enables a response to the Divine.

I remember in my high school years, corresponding with a friend’s cousin who was a lay brother at the Dominical House of Prayer in Washington, D.C. I treasured our letters and wrote that we are all part of the wholeness of God. All holding some bit of God, like a puzzle piece, deep within. And when all things finally gathered together, God would be wholly present. What planted that sense in my teenage heart? If Rahner was right, it was there from the start, calling for openness to Mystery and attention.

As Mary Oliver so clearly understood, we are called to notice. Seeking is unnecessary since God is already here. But attentiveness and quiet have something to do with deepening the relationship with the Holy within and without.

Recently, I spent a day with two friends I have known since we were in our late teens. Like beautiful threads, we weave in and out of one another’s life tapestries. Sharing our spiritual journeys is always part of the conversation. Nestled in the woods on the edge of the Hocking Hills, their home is simple yet adorned with beautiful bits of nature and art (many pieces made by friends). Chairs and couches are arranged in a cozy circle good for talking, and the kitchen, complete with a long table, welcomes family and friends.

We shared memories of past gatherings and coming adventures, titles of books we’re currently reading as well as ones that are staples of our lives. We read poetry, caught up on our families, and ate delicious homemade soup and bread while sipping iced tea.

On our walk, light filtered by trees on our right made beautiful patterns across the road and the tree trunks on our left. Nuthatches and chickadees had their lunch at the large feeder and woodpeckers’ drumming announced they were finding theirs elsewhere.

And while I spoke of my soul’s longing to spend days with the ocean, the woody beauty called out for attention. When given to the place where I was at that moment, attention revealed Mystery and Love waiting there.

Oliver’s poem “Praying” begins by pointing out that an encounter with Holy Presence need not be occasioned by something particularly stunning. She says it doesn’t have to be a blue iris. I’d say it doesn’t have to be the ocean.

ocean shore
dandelion and weeds
fossil rocks, snail shells leaves

Praying

It doesn’t have to be 
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones;
just pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver generously shared the fruit of her attention and journey with us in volumes of poetry. I give thanks. And while I’m still hoping for a week or two at a beach before the year is out, I will try to heed her admonition in “Messenger,” that “My work is loving the world…” and that despite having old boots, a torn coat, and arriving at mid-seventies “…still not half perfect …” I will focus on what is mine to do. She sums it up in her poem “Sometimes”:

“Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it… “

Thank you, Mary Oliver.

Sources:

“Why I Wake Early” by Mary Oliver   Published in Why I Wake Early  (2004) p. 3

“At the River Clarion” by Mary Oliver   Published in Evidence (2000)

“Praying”  by Mary Oliver  Published in Thirst ( 2006) p. 37

“Messenger” by Mary Oliver   Published in Thirst (2006) p. 1

“Sometimes” by Mary Oliver   Published in Red Bird (2008) p. 35-38

All these poems and many more, have been published in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2019). She arranged these poems herself from her books published from 1963 to 2015! If you love Mary Oliver, this is a book to own!

You can purchase it online from Bookshop.org and support independent bookstores across the country. if you have a favorite, you can even choose the bookstore you would like to support. Mine is Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio

Celebrating Change, Bit by Bit

Celebrating Change, Bit by Bit

I took a walk in the sunny cold air this morning, just once around the block before lunch, and chatted with landscapers piling dark, smelly mulch around the gardens of an old, ranch double. We smiled. One man predicted warm weather ahead. “Suddenly, spring is here!” he said. And so it seemed.

But just when I had hope of swapping winter parkas for my favorite lightweight fleece, a fierce storm brought lighting and thunder, pelting rain and hail, plummeting temperatures, and tree-felling tornados.

This is Ohio after all.

I know “you should never say ‘never’,” but I’ll chance it. Change is never smooth. No. It comes with starts and stops, pains and joys, and not necessarily in that order. It demands letting go of the old before we can embrace the new. And it’s never once and done.

The plants I thought were dead after the first freeze have been growing and changing in one way or another, unobserved, through the Midwest’s persistent winter until they seem to pop up overnight. Like the crocuses that painted my neighbor’s lawn with purple one morning.  Of course, they’d long been working toward that moment; I’ve just not been alert to the process. Change is rarely predictable. And with growing things, it’s seldom sudden.

How many miniscule shifts had protective leaf scales made before I finally noticed them relaxing, inviting buds to soak up sun and stretch their sweet bodies into warmer air? Uncountable.

So, as far as spring goes, I try to wait patiently, trusting that the forces of change are at work in the background. Eventually, enough atoms will have shifted, insects nibbled, and water and temperature flowed up and down and around, that even with my limited abilities to observe, I can see that something’s afoot.

I cultivate the habit of looking and listening closely. I slow down on my walks, spend more time gazing out my windows, and get comfortable with quiet so nature’s sounds have a place to sing.

Is this why Mary Oliver started every day standing in the doorway, notebook in hand, welcoming morning, noticing? She knew that to see the flow of glory she had to be there every moment, open, senses alert, ready to be amazed.

Can I do the same so when skunk cabbage appears in marshy places or forsythia bushes bloom or maple leaves unfurl after their flowery tassels have festooned the trees and then fallen to the sidewalk, or more birdsong fills the air – so when these things happen, I am at the door to welcome them as surprising yet awaited guests who arrive in their own time.

It’s not just the “out there” physical, observable matter that changes under cover. Movement within the human spirit is ongoing and often unnoticed. My spiritual eye is frequently clouded and unable to see. I don’t stay still long enough for it to focus. I don’t sit quietly long enough for my inner ear to hear sacred whispers.

When a shroud of darkness seems to suddenly lift from my soul, there is likely nothing sudden about it. Like plants in winter, Holy Presence that dwells within has been busy opening me bit by bit to its love and warmth that have been there all along. So I believe.

When I experience a moment of grace or encounter, am I finally noticing the ongoing transformation happening from the inside out?  I wonder, do human beings need an accumulation of “holy” before they see it?

Like Mary Oliver, I can stand at the door of my house and my soul and be still. Quiet. Patient. Attentive. Trusting that, seen or not, the miracle of transformation is happening, inside and out. And it is amazing.

Photos: Mary van Balen