To The Bride Married to Amazement - The Divine Mary Oliver

All you need to do is look through my posts over the last 10 years and you will see the influence of #MaryOliver throughout. Since her death was announced, I received emails from friends saying they thought of me because they know how much I loved her. I’ve been a little numb since I’ve heard. If the inability to find words to describe what someone has meant to you is any measure of your affection – then it is safe to say I loved Mary Oliver dearly.

NOT ANYONE WHO SAYS

Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be careful and smart in matters of love,” who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,” but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable — only those know what I’m talking about in this talking about love.

Image by Rachel Brown 2005

I never met her. I knew little of her until I attended a weekend silent meditation retreat years ago. To kick off the retreat a visiting mindfulness instructor read from Mary Oliver’s most obscure works on the beauty of pear juice dripping from a knife. Nothing slipped by without her laying in the beauty of the moment. Even cutting pears. It was like this secret language I always spoke that only she knew, and I felt so warmed by her words that day. From that moment on I’ve been a complete devotee. She would so hate that statement. But, it’s true. She became my inner voice and helped realign my vision to see the world differently.

Carl Jung often talk of loneliness and how it had nothing to do with being physically alone but everything to do with a desire to talk of things no one understood or has an interest. I’ve been lonely in a room full of people more often than not. Until Mary. I bought her books and read everything about her I could get my hands on. As I studied her I became aware she had a very traumatic childhood and attributes those experiences as the seeds that grew her poetry. I was trying to find the ‘one’ line that saved or influenced me the most. I smiled at the thought of finding it.

“The Veil”

There are moments when the veil seems almost to lift, and we understand what the earth is meant to mean to us — the trees in their docility, the hills in their patience, the flowers and the vines in their wild, sweet vitality. Then the Word is within us, and the Book is put away.

Her poems have made me a better human. She helped me see divinity in what was once mundane. I spend a little more time welcoming the birds when the seasons change, moving worms out of the sunlight and watching squirrels play tag for way too long.

But her greatest gift to me is the way she taught me to watch these beautiful girls navigate through life in a way that observes as opposed to intervenes with nature. She taught me that nature doesn't work that way - it moves forward. I believe her.

Snow will forever be white rhetoric, the sun will forever have slipped past the stars to blossom and when I’m struggling with forgiveness I will forever reframe it into darkness that was given to me, but it too is a gift that may take years for me to understand.

She talked often about being a bride married to amazement and if you are going to love be swept away by a love that may be unsuitable, but its force was too great to ignore. She made every small thought I ever had seem pale in comparison to watching leaves twinkle in the wind. She wrapped me in an altered state of nature and all its spiritual raw beauty. I tasted what it meant to belong.

Thank you seems so unpoetic – yet it is my greatest prayer for your influence in making me want to be a better person as you so lovingly remind me - in this one precious life I have. What a loss it is to barely breathe a little and call it a life.

"Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must take care of what has been given."

I was always so curious how she would leave this world she came to love so much and I found an interview where (in very Mary Oliver fashion) she said "she will enter the new door with as much curiosity and wonder as she wakes up with everyday."

In my world, she is what heroes are made of --- farewell, much love and complete awe for the gifts you gave that will live on inside me long after the book is put away. xoxo