Wild and Precious Life
Posted by Nicole on March 2, 2015
sometimes, I wake up already feeling behind.
when this happens, I let the wisdom in my pen speak truth.
What will you do with your one wild and precious life?
You woke up this morning already listing the ways you will fail – the tasks that will meet resistance and never reach the finish line. You lay, covered in clean sheets and painless skin, and yet you felt strangling discomfort in your soul.
Why, Darling?
Why have you forgotten your place? You are a child – a wild, lovely, free child – living in the world run by the most loving and responsible Parent in the world.
So, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?
or rather
What ARE YOU DOING with it? You can only live right now.
Landsliding to-do lists and performance reviews care for the future, but what are you doing to care for right now? Set time aside to tend the future – a set time to let your mind wander into next month and next year and even this afternoon. Carve out time-travel appointments, but do not forget to come back to this time and this place…this is where you actually live, My Love.
You are a flower, growing for such a short time. Be here. Growth and beauty and achievement will come as you soak up sun, water, and nutrients. Feel the strain and sensation of now – know that it is leading somewhere but that “somewhere” is none of your concern. Take each next step.
The act of attention is a form of prayer.
You’ll be surprised to find that as you witness the universe, the universe notices you right back. This is the glory of a loving Creator.
*****
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?
*****
Photo found at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/photo-contest/2011/entries/101679/view/
Wild Horse found at http://www.heartofahorse.org/category/beauties/page/158/
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