Thanks For The Wisdom Teachers

Opening up the miniblinds on the north side here, I thought “none of the dark came in.” What a quirky-ass thought. You can’t let in more dark. And how grand in the dark it is to hear the crickets playing their part in the percussion section of the coming dawn, like layering in where one instrument plays, then another is added, then another, though their sound is easily overpowered. A car drives by, they fade, then they come in again, then they fade with another car’s passing. Fortissimo, pianissimo, fortissimo. I’m grateful for the lovely wake up music, anyway, grateful I can still hear it.

Today is the birthday of Mary Oliver (1935), author of poems and ideas that have meant so much to me. I have at least mentioned her in 16 of 262 previous posts, so I feel justified in taking time to honor her.

I don’t need to say any more than “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I have that one locked away, memorized, and I’m grateful for these and uncounted others of her words in my life. These little joys and words add up. Thanks for the poems, Mary, you rock. “You do not have to be good,” she wrote, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. The world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over again announcing your place in the family of things.” It’s part of my internal, long-term meditation, like Rumi and Joseph Campbell and all the other go-to sources. So many teachers of wisdom, so much to learn. Thanks be, I can live into that, thanks be and Hallelujah.

I can now just make out the road, the telephone pole, some green stuff across the street as light slowly returns to this longitude. Just reheated my coffee and I’m grateful for a microwave. It’s a humble everyday item, usually taken for granted, like a great relationship or a rewarding job or plenty of food, and that’s also a good thing. You know, you’ve grown to depend on it, in that sense taken for granted. So it’s good to speak it out loud or write it, which is a lot of what this writing discipline is for. To help keep stuff in the forefront as often as I can.

It’s still good to remember 2004 and when I almost died. Just getting a glimpse of what might have been, could have happened, but thankfully did not. Touching on the value of being grateful for everyday things, I need look no further than the way I felt when my bare feet once again touched June greencool grass outside Massachusetts General Hospital sitting in a wheelchair in my johnny holding a mobile pole with all my dripping IVs after major surgeries that saved my life. I was so deeply grateful to be alive and enjoy such a simple pleasure.

Another birthday of note, Leo Tolstoy’s, was yesterday (1828). After War and Peace was published in December 1869 (he had published sections as he wrote them), he said “What I have written there was not simply imagined by me, but torn out of my cringing entrails.” I myself mused once that I wouldn’t be able to write about certain topics unless I was bleeding. I’m in good company, then, with the Count. He also wrote “What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed.” I like that, not being bound to labels, but just bleeding it out however it needs to be said. That serves as an ideal description of this Inquiry Into A Gratitude-Inspired Life.

I offer you these words from Mary Oliver, as our Monday begins–

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

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