Pay Attention With Mary Wolfe

Contemplation with Mary Wolfe - Mary is a Spiritual Director, plays the harp, is an actor and an amazing storyteller, a passionate gardener, and artist. She recently started attending a Quaker gathering which is a return to her childhood spiritual roots. As far as service to the community, Mary is part of an organization that supports indigenous people who are in recovery.

Transcript

I would rather give you an outline of what I would encourage you to do after this session because if I lead you,

Then it's me imposing on you my thoughts and where I want you to go and I don't know where the Spirit wants you to go in this.

So let me give you the invitation and then let each one of you who may be listening to this take it from there.

I want to refer to a poem that Mary Oliver wrote.

It's actually one small stanza in a larger poem,

Her poem called Sometimes and in the middle of this poem,

These are her words,

Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention,

Be astonished,

Tell about it.

And so I invite you to take anything.

It can be a flower,

It can be something from nature,

A leaf,

A twig,

A squirrel's tail,

Shell,

A clod of dirt.

It can be something man-made,

The pencil sitting on your desk,

The glasses you're wearing on your face.

It can be the granola that you eat at breakfast or anything that you can hold in your hand that you can look at and engage with in as many of your senses as you can use.

And Mary Oliver says this is instructions for living a life,

Not just a contemplative practice in a few moments,

But living a life.

And the first instruction is pay attention.

So as you look at this thing that you've chosen,

Just be with it.

Pay attention.

Think of how it grew or how it was made or how many people were involved in creating it.

Whatever,

However many thoughts that you can bring to this of paying attention to this object.

And pay attention to it as long as it takes to bring you to a place of astonishment.

And I can almost guarantee that part of that astonishment will be your sense of oneness with whatever it is that you're holding.

And then as life opportunity comes to you,

You can share that experience with others or not.

But coming to that place of astonishment around the oneness of all things,

That is a way of living life.