Welcome back everyone! I hope that you were able to enjoy some time of rest over break and even perhaps some playfulness and contemplation. I list these things in a particular order because rest is essential and if we don’t have it, playfulness and contemplation tend to not come to the surface in meaningful ways. For a variety of reasons, I had a lot more time than usual to sit still the last few weeks. The stillness was something I initially fought and then eventually I gave in to it. Rest came from the stillness, then came a time of “deep looking” at the wonder of nature as I watched a daily gathering of wild geese in view right outside my window on the Long Island Sound.
I laughed when I would see them gather. It looked like a kind of daily coffee klatch, not unlike the one my late father enjoyed every morning with a group of his friends after
attending daily Mass. My dad and his gang were all in their 80s or 90s and would laugh together, munch on donuts, share stories, probably talk about their kids and most
importantly connect with each other on a simple human level. That connection allowed them to go about their lives, exercise, cook, run errands, embrace a new day. These geese I would see each morning would swim in formation, fish, stare at each other and ponder their respective catch, swim some more together and then disperse, each to their own “errands”. Soon they will fly south, high above me and resume their morning routine elsewhere for the winter.
After making me smile, watching these geese and conjuring up the memory of my dad’s all-important daily coffee klatch, I found myself in a kind of contemplative state of mind. I was able to focus on the importance of connection, the hidden surprises contained within a routine, the need for simplicity in the midst of a world fraught with chaos and harsh questions, and the grounding perspective that these things absolutely have meaning to our larger story. The late poet Mary Oliver’s well-known piece, Wild Geese, reminds us that in the midst of our despair, “the world goes on.” As we ready ourselves to start a new semester let us look up from our phones and any other distraction that might be keeping us from true stillness and take a few moments each day to do some “deep looking”, to distill joy from momentary encounters and to allow for the “world to offer itself” to our imagination.
Wild Geese
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.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
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.
-Mary Oliver