Pause for Prayer: SUNDAY 8/23

 

One of the delights of being here in Georgetown, CO is sitting on my sister's porch and watching the hummingbirds come to the feeders.  They rarely feed in groups like this so I was pleased to catch this trio in a moment of sharing. I love this Mary Oliver poem - and thought my video and her verse might fill a pause for prayer this Sunday morning. (Click on the video [middle icon, lower right) to expand, for a closer look) 

 

As for life,

I’m humbled,

I’m without words  

sufficient to say

 

how it has been hard as flint,  

and soft as a spring pond,  

both of these  

and over and over,

 

and long pale afternoons besides, 

and so many mysteries  

beautiful as eggs in a nest,  

still unhatched

 

though warm and watched over  

by something I have never seen – 

 a tree angel, perhaps,  

or a ghost of holiness.

 

Every day I walk out into the world  

to be dazzled, then to be reflective.  

It suffices, it is all comfort –  

along with human love,

 

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,  

sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds  

flying among the scarlet flowers.  

There is hardly time to think about

 

stopping, and lying down at last 

to the long afterlife, to the tenderness  

yet to come, when  

time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

 

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves. 

As for death, 

I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,  

can you?

-  Mary Oliver 

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