A Window is Where the Wall is Absent

The life impulse to express and to connect arises in me and in all of us. This blog is a celebration of these life impulses. Please feel free to join in the conversation or to just visit. There is a Family Photo Album beneath the posts so you can "meet" my family and I. Welcome!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Banquet

I came across an eye-opening passage from Anthony de Mello's book Awareness (p. 26, excerpt).

"Life is a banquet. And the tragedy is that most people are starving to death. There's a story about some people who were on a raft off the coast of Brazil perishing from thirst. They had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water. The river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went out for a couple of miles, so they had fresh water right there where they were. But they had no idea. In the same way, we're surrounded with joy, with happiness, with love. Most people have no idea of this whatsoever."

As I type this, a new Mary Oliver poem that just came out in the spring Parabola issue floats to mind. Let me close by sharing this poem, which my husband Greg also loved. Every time I have read this poem it has had a new layer of meaning to me. It's related to the above passage from de Mello in my mind.


In Your Hands

The dog, the donkey, surely they know
they are alive.
Who would argue otherwise?

But now, after years of consideration,
I am getting beyond that.
What about the sunflowers? What about
the tulips, and the pines?

Listen, all you have to do is start and
there'll be no stopping.
What about mountains? What about water
slipping over the hard-skinned rocks?

And, speaking of stones, what about
the little ones you can
hold in your hands, their heartbeats
so secret, so hidden it may take years

before, finally, you hear them?

4 comments:

roseduncan said...

A really beautifully written poem. Thanks for sharing so much. . . "their heartbeats so hidden. . ."

Colleen Loehr said...

Hi Naomi, So glad you liked this poem. It definitely zapped some hidden place in me, as good poems do. I love it when words echo off some undiscovered inner landscape, when the writer has accessed some deep terrain, and their words open up a corresponding space in me when I read them.

Unknown said...

Wonderful and I can see how each read could bring some new meaning (after years of consideration). :)

Colleen Loehr said...

Mary Oliver passionately advocates against the destruction of the earth. "In Your Hands" I think is at least a double-entendre (and maybe a triple-entendre), referring to the small stone held in the hands in the poem, and referring to the blazingly alive planet Earth that is now held, precariously, in the hands of humankind.

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