Mary Oliver

We met in the biting winter nights of my service year in New Hampshire. I listened with full attention as she illuminated the nuances of a world I thought I knew with the written word, hers, words that continue to remind me I am never truly alone, words that continue to show me the world is always at offer to the playground of my imagination.

Later, when faced with the task of figuring what direction my life would go next, she visited me in Spain and reminded me not to worry. “Things will take the time they take.” Saint Augustine followed many roads before he became Saint Augustine. It is all a journey, she said, a long, wide, and deep dive into the unfathomed.

She also told me there are certain moments in life that cry out to be fulfilled, like telling someone you love them. I followed her word when that moment came for me. The woman, someone who cherished August blackberries, someone I loved dearly, gave me a box full of darkness in return. I learned only later that this, too, was a gift.

She came again when, during a morning walk down by the lake, I heard the call of wild geese, harsh and exciting, high in the clean blue air. I had been preoccupied with finding a sense of place, a sense that I belonged in the family of things, of knowing what to do next. I turned my gaze toward the geese, and my problems hushed their determined utterances. I watched the geese fly across the open sky, losing all sense of time, and when they flew beyond the range of my vision, I was inhabited by a lighter sense of being. I had taken flight with the geese, or rather, they had taken me. They reminded that I was an animal among animals, a lucky collection of stardust, something alive and wonderfully capable of experiencing the shared wonders of existence.

I and many others will continue to feel the echoes of her singular devotion to her one wild and precious life. Even darkness can be a gift, a fire that awakens the sleeping soul, a light that guides us to our higher selves.

To Mary Oliver, for teaching me that the sacred is always within reach.

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