The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”
I’m endeavoring, and am successful more and more often, to remember to pause, to settle, to be grateful, before moving into the plans and tasks, upon waking…
“In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
that closes
the moment
you begin your plans.
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To become human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?
What shape waits
in the seed of you
to grow and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?”
The last day of February – already. Our winter in northwest Montana came late… beautifully, powerfully and incessantly. Deep cold and deep snow. Satisfying. Waking to heavy snow showers this morning, knowing we’re transitioning soon, I’m absorbing it all.
I need this deep winter.
“I love the deep silence of the midwinter woods. It is a stillness you can rest your whole weight against… This stillness is so profound you are sure it will hold and last.”
-Florence Page Jaques
“So burrow in. Snuggle deep. A winter idyll of simple splendor awaits.”
There is a note at the end of this volume, Why I Wake Early, that says: “On the eve of the publication of her third volume of poems, Twelve Moons, Archibald MacLeish wrote to Mary Oliver: “You have indeed entered the kingdom. You have done something better than create your own world: you have discovered the world we all live in and do not see and cannot feel.” Mary Oliver must have always been compelled to wake early to take it all in, to discover, and then discover anew, in each moment, our magnificent and glorious world… Her words LIVE and help us to live each moment, even in her absence.
“Go outside
and let your breath
be stolen away.
Find the forests,
seek the seas,
meditate
on the mountains,
mist covered
from morning.
We are nurtured
by nature, born
for the wild places;
we’ve no business
in cities, in buildings
taller than trees
can grow.
Go outside,
and begin living
again.”
“Let us love winter
