Spirit Matters: Be kind to you, that’s what Jesus would do

As a lifelong lover of words, I believe in their power to communicate profound truths when used with careful intention.

Stories, novels, essays … however used, and in whatever format, words can change the reader and the world, for better or for worse.

Poems, in particular, have a remarkable way of speaking to the human heart. In the hands of a skillful poet, readers can find deep insight into the joys, trials and tragedies of their lives.

Few poets have been better at this than the late Mary Oliver.

Oliver was a genius at using nature-based metaphors to communicate her experience of being human. By quietly observing and reflecting on nature in its vast and complicated, yet intelligent beauty, Oliver was able to key in on common realities in life.

In one of her most famous poems, “Wild Geese,” Oliver speaks to the human tendency to feel the need to prove something to others, to meet certain criteria to have one’s existence validated, to having the feeling of never being enough, no matter how hard one tries. She begins:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

When I was a child, it was customary at St. Stephen’s Church in Streator on Good Friday to walk on one’s knees from the crucifix in front of the altar to the tomb where Jesus lay, in the entrance on the east side of the church. The entire experience was intended to be and felt extremely penitential.

Our bodies, our entire beings, are the work of an infinitely loving and intelligent creator, who freely gave us the gift of life. A gift we don’t have to earn or pay for, but one for which we can show gratitude by fully living the ‘one wild and precious life’ we have been given.

The next lines in “Wild Geese” go like this:

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Every one of us suffers in deep and profound ways. There is no getting through life without it. Some of us try to numb it with distractions such as drugs, alcohol, gambling and other addictions. While others eventually come to recognize that even though we suffer, the world and our lives are filled with immeasurable beauty, and the darkness and light that make up our lives do so in a wondrous dance of grace.

Finally, Oliver introduces the wild geese, who represent the freedom we have been given to sing our lives in joy and sacred play:

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.