Ah,
Mary Oliver.
Have we visited and spent time with her yet?
I can't recall.
All the way here in week 29 of these 52 weeks in a one numerological year.
Can't recall if we visited with Mary Oliver,
But she's one of my favorite places to land for heartfelt inspiration and soul-soothing wisdom about life.
Let's dig in.
Week 29.
Mary Oliver has a way about her.
I admire her will toward stillness,
Her compassion for everything of this world,
And her tolerance for the reality of disruptions in this beautiful place that she admired so wonderfully in her poems and essays.
I tie this to last week's Pico Ayer about reality,
About our partnership with it.
This is a sideways glance at that kind of thinking.
Mary Oliver,
I think,
Wanted to deny reality or ignore,
Yet always found herself once again staring at its face.
This is another side of that equation,
Another way of looking at the reality we live in and how we live in reality.
It's a long quote.
I'm going to read it and leave you with it.
You make of it what you will.
This is from Upstream Selected Essays by Mary Oliver.
My responsibility is not to the ordinary or the timely.
It does not include mustard or teeth,
Does not extend to the lost button or the beans in the pot.
My loyalty is to the inner vision,
Whenever and howsoever it may arrive.
If I have a meeting with you at three o'clock,
Rejoice if I am late.
Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done.
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work,
Who felt their own creative power restive and uprising and gave it neither power nor time.
So,
Awake and creative,
Decide for yourself.
How are you dancing this dance?
Your creative self within,
The world,
Reality without.
Neither one undeniable,
Neither one ignored.
But in harmony,
In balance,
To your own internal rhythm,
Awaken creative today.
