Wisdom

with numbered excerpts from Mary Oliver's "To Begin With, the Sweet Grass"

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass, by Mary Oliver

1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.

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Away from home at a middle school camp in Virginia, I’ve been finding myself. Yes, that’s the end of the sentence. I’ve spent long days outside in the sunshine, mornings walking up and down the side of mountains, hot afternoons with young people who are excited to dance and sing and splash in a very cold spring. The birds each morning are the song I walk to and the lifting voices of young teenagers the song of the afternoon. There’s a finery to this that I can’t quite explain.

A swan named Nikki greets me each morning. Not exactly, but she regales me with her swan beauty. The soft white of her seems both otherworldly and a reminder to notice this exact world I’m in.

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2.

Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.

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Each morning before I came here, I sat on my porch watching the hummingbirds dance and dive and whir around the feeders I keep stocked with fresh sugar water. I watched them provoke one another and hover near me, observing I suppose.

Those early mornings, I breathed in the air around me and knew it as holy. There is a spaciousness in watching the sky change color and listening to the birds come to life that can’t be described in words that I know of. Perhaps, I think, this is how we fall more in love with every fleeting moment and person.

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3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.

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These summer days give me pause. Everything feels abundant, like it could go on forever. Long days and lush green as far as I can see. These young teens spread out there arms and run down the hills into spaciousness below them without ever stopping. This beauty can’t go on, and it won’t. And yet, somehow, it is also eternal. How could that be? I hold this one day in the stillness of my breath if but for a moment.

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6. (and part of 7)
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
your life—
what would do for you?

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

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I think, number your days with wisdom and grace. It’s wisdom that tells me it’s dangerous to believe everything is true that I hear from a source or see online. This way has me looking out the window to the sunshine and calling it rain. And it is dangerous to believe nothing, deciding to stay in the echoing chamber of my mind.

It’s grace that pushes my heart further—look to the hillside, to what nature has to show and sing to you. Look in the eyes of the young. Breathe into your lungs and let the breath be enchantment. Why not, I ask myself?

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I have found this to be very true. Magic, each time I find myself out of the country in which I live, and in a place whispering to me of exploration and new adventure. Join me this fall! Read more about the Portugal experience and sign up here: Join Me In Portugal!

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