Daily Devotion

The Summer Day  by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

On this final day of these devotions, I wanted to share my favorite Mary Oliver poem.  What do you think of it?  I discovered it while on sabbatical in 2015, and I sat with it at that time as I pondered the ministry I felt called to do by God’s spirit.   I loved the ending of the poem where she asks, “Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  It is a big question, isn’t it?  How would you answer?  Can you hear God, our creator, calling to you?

But there is also the part of the poem which simply rejoices in the gift of creation and revels in its beauty.  It reminds of me Psalm 8 where the psalmist writes, “O LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth . . . When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you established . . .”   It is as if the Mary Oliver and psalmist cannot help themselves and must praise God’s earth and sky, God’s plants and animals, all things, which make up creation.  I often revel in the beauty of creation as I walk in my neighborhood (there is beautiful, old oak tree whose trunk is covered in multi-shades of green lichen) or through a park or as I tend to my patch of coneflowers that the pollinators, butterflies and the birds love.  Perhaps one of the best things we can do with our one wild and precious life is to give thanks to God for the creation and our lives and serve God all our days.

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? 

What part of God’s creation do you revel in?