“The Pleasures of the Body in This World”

Although life brings great challenges, there are also great joys.

Lent has begun but joy is not something that has to be given up!

There is a lovely Mary Oliver poem about her dog:

“…Running here, running there, excited…
the pleasures of the body in this world.
Oh, I could not have said it better myself.”
from ‘The Storm’

There is so much to be anxious and fearful about at the moment, but anxiety and fear themselves do not promote generosity and caring. We also need to be open-hearted and compassionate.

The photograph shows a recent sunrise in Shropshire, UK, over our most famous hill – The Wrekin.

The sun rose over the horizon just afterwards, but the colours of the sky gave me joy, as did the synchronicity of the flock of rooks who decided to move across the view in their contrasting dark silhouettes.

I felt the pleasure deep in my body, as we do other pleasures. And one of the things I am hoping to give up in Lent is any narrow-minded materialism that makes me forget my emotionality and spirituality, my joy, my pleasure in being human.

And I hope that will make me also a more caring and compassionate person.

Sunrise, The Wrekin and Rooks – February 2022

Who Are Your Blessed Company?

Feeling alone, feeling abandoned – these are amongst the most terrible feelings we can experience as human beings.

And the opposite is true – a sense of belonging, of fellowship, of being loved – these are some of the most life-affirming feelings, what makes us feel on top of the world, confident, capable of realising all our potential.

For the poet Mary Oliver, nature often brings her that sense of consolation and belonging:

“I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying …
Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts…”
from ‘What Gorgeous Thing’

I wrote the following poem when I lived in Dorset, and had a similar feeling of closeness and consolation from nature:

Thrush hurls her song
in curls and spirals and dead straight lines
.
The trees stand as still as time
The hills look down benignly
.
The wind converses enigmatically
The river merely suggests itself so quietly
.
Even the buttercups
Nod their heads with glee –
.
I feel I am among
such blessed company.

And I wonder who – or what – are your “blessed company”?

Meditating Gloriously

“I prefer to lounge under a tree…
Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am…
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints –
all that glorious, temporary stuff.”
from ‘On Meditating, Sort of’ by Mary Oliver

These beautiful lines by Mary Oliver are more than a “sort of” meditation (her title of the poem!).

They speak to me about her uniqueness as a human being – all of our uniqueness as individual, differentiated people – and I love how she links her “sort of” meditation with lounging under a tree.

The photograph below was of a unique moment recently. The sun was setting as I looked out over the floods of the River Severn, and then I noticed the beautiful, unique reflections of the trees (they are normally standing in a field!).

How wonderful to be who we are – our own thoughts, our own experiences, our unique, glorious “stuff”.

Drifting

There are different kinds of thinking.

Mary Oliver captures one particular kind in her poem ‘Drifting’:

“It’s wonderful to walk along like that,
thought not the usual intention to reach an answer
but merely drifting.
Like clouds that only seem weightless
but of course are not…”

We could not live without the clouds that drift through our skies.

And we need different types of thinking other than logical reason – ‘drifting’ thoughts can be just as valuable and “really important”as Mary Oliver goes on to say.

I wrote this poem after being inspired by the sky and the clouds – they also seemed to speak to me.

Sky speaks to me
wind whispers her breezes
.
Clouds move inside my mind
and all this seems good:
.
I have seen the invisible
qualities of God
.
And I
have understood.

The Comfort of Mother Earth

Mary Oliver writes:

“I too have known loneliness…
Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this…”
from ‘Loneliness’

There is a comfort to be found in nature, perhaps consolation from the feelings of loneliness that everyone experiences once in a while. I wrote this poem about the “connectedness” we can sometimes feel with nature – a similar feeling to that described by Mary Oliver.

The wild birds

Inhabit these hills

And I, a walker,

Glancing down the valley

Dazzled by gleaming lights

Flung across the fields like necklaces

I feel connected

With the wind

The grass under my feet

God’s sky above my head.

Brother Nature

Mary Oliver is a poet who is both realistic and responsive to the ways of nature:

The slippery green frog
that went to his death
in the heron’s beak
was my small brother
From ‘After Reading Lucretius I Go To The Pond’

The predated animal is her “brother” – but so is the predator…

…the heron …
in the shining pool
is my tall thin brother

So when I recently watched a red kite (Brother Red Kite!) being mobbed by a rook (Brother Rook) – photograph below – her poem helped me to understand that the natural world can be both violent and fascinating.

After all, the plants “eat” the sunshine and the rain; animals eat the plants; and we humans eat both animals and plants.

We are all part of the same universe, we share so much – and I like Mary Oliver’s way of thinking about nature, which also reminded me of St. Francis of Assisi’s famous “Canticle of the Sun” which celebrate “Brother Sun … Sister Moon … Sister Water … Brother Fire … Sister Earth”:

We praise you, Lord, for all your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom you give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,
of you Most High, he bears your likeness.
We praise you, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.
We praise you, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which you cherish all that you have made.
We praise you, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.
We praise you, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.
We praise you, Lord, for Sister Earth,
who sustains us
with her fruits, coloured flowers, and herbs.

Red Kite and Rook, Shropshire, February 2022

Snowdrops at Wroxeter

The snowdrops

At Wroxeter

Whisper

in the breeze

“This is our timeless

Dance

Now

And for thousands of years.”

The Fieldfares and Redwings of Wroxeter

Wroxeter Roman City, just outside Shrewsbury, Shropshire, U.K., is a peaceful and beautiful place. During the winter months, the surrounding fields are home to fieldfares and redwings, seasonal visitors from Scandinavia.

Watching the fieldfares

And the redwings

At Wroxeter

From a distance

Feel the beauty

And the joy

And the love

For all existence.

Fieldfare image fomr Pixabay, and redwing image by Ingi Finnsson also from Pixabay

The Birds Who Own Nothing and Fly!

Birds teach us about freedom, so we should make room in our hearts for them!

This is a message I have taken away from Mary Oliver’s amazing poem with the mundane title ‘Storage’. She talks about clutter she kept in storage as she moved from one place to another, and how all these things eventually meant so little to her that they could all be burned in a “beautiful fire”!

I love the conclusion of this poem: