HELLO!

I plan to take my vacation in August this year. Of course, as has been my practice for 36 years, if someone dies, I will return to support the family and preside at the funeral. Kim and I are not leaving the property this summer, except for a few concerts during the Halifax Jazz Festival. More recently, I have come to enjoy looking out at our lawn, unlike the others in the subdivision, we never replaced the original “dumped fill” with rocks and weeds, with sods and landscaping. Our lawn looks like a combination of the moon’s surface and a chia pet. See for yourself.

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, too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The most famous lines of this poem are the last two. But the heart of the poem is a couple of lines earlier: “Tell me, what else should I have done?” What else, besides “falling down in the grass, being idle and blessed, strolling through the fields all day.” At its heart, this poem is a provocative question, what makes for a day well lived? How should I spend this “summer day”? Mary Oliver’s life-changing proposition is we very well may need to rethink what a “productive day” looks like. It may look a lot less like a day tied to screens and email and errands and getting things done, and a lot more like the simple, astonishing affair of getting to know a grasshopper. Getting down on her knees to take a closer look at that grasshopper requires paying some serious attention to what Mary Oliver is doing, to what she’s experiencing; that’s something she says she knows how to do, which means she’s had practice at it. In some religious traditions paying attention is named mindfulness, a spiritual discipline.  After all, most of us would have a hard time saying that we know exactly what prayer is, but we can certainly learn how to be better at paying attention, how to be better at spending time with friends, with Creation, with ideas, wondering and questioning. Maybe, to others, it might seem that we’re not doing religion the right way, that we’re not putting enough work into it, but we know we’re blessed. What else should we be doing? Life’s too short to let it pass us by. So tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Peace, Kevin

PS Over the 20 years we have lived in this house, a few members of the various churches I have served in HRM have moved from their house to an apartment. When I saw garden statues, like this frog and tiger, I would ask the member if I could have it. They always said yes, they were pleased to give it a new home. Over the years, children getting off the school bus and dog walkers, have spotted these additions to our lawn. Some have smiled and some look confused. But I like that they are paying attention.