Mary Oliver Workshop Details

Mary Oliver: Guide to the Life of the Spirit
Facilitator: Rev. Roger Butts
Location: Mt. St. Francis, Colorado Springs CO
9-Noon, 10-10-09

Outline for the morning:
Our weekend retreat will be broken into three sections (9-10 a.m., 10-11, 11-12). There will be ample time for journaling, walking around, and reflection and discussion. From 9-9:40, we'll do some introductions (and touchstones, see below) and we'll begin with questions of looking, awareness, openness, receptivity. We'll break for snacks, and some walking or meditation, etc. From 10-10:15, we'll talk about what came up in your reflection time.From 10:15-10:40, we'll move to our next section, which is related to expectancy and the idea of the miraculous (as you might expect, we'll hear from Ralph Waldo Emerson on this one).From 10:40 until 11:00, we'll break for snacks, and some walking or journaling or reflection time. From 11 until 11:15 we'll discuss what came up in your reflection time.From 11:15-11:40, we'll introduce and consider the idea of response--giving back--and transformation and going back in a non-linear way to the questions, to looking around, to expectancy, etc. 11:40 until Noon, debrief, evaluation, take homes, etc.


TOUCHSTONES:
*Extend and receive welcome
*Be present as fully as possible
*What is offered in the circle is by invitation, not demand
*Speak your truth in ways that respect other people's truth
*No fixing, no saving, no advising, and no setting each other straight
*Learn to respond to others (and one's self) with honest, open questions
*When the going gets rough, turn to wonder.
*Attend to yoru own inner teacher
*Trust and learn from the silence
*Observe deep confidentiality (talk only about what is said in the circle not beyond it; and tell your own story after the event, not someone else's)
*Know you can get what you need.


POEMS TO READ BEFORE THE EVENT
Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?
Mary Oliver (Why I Wake Early)
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open. And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree – they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes. At least, closer. And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.

Mindful
Mary Oliver (Why I wake early)
Every dayI see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystackof light.
It was what I was born for -to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Going to Walden
Mary Oliver (The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems, 1972)

This poem was inspired by a day on which friends of Mary Oliver invited her to join them on a trip to Walden Pond. Mary Oliver decided not to join them.


It isn’t very far as highways lie.
I might be back by night fall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

Some Questions You Might Ask
Mary Oliver
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

(House of Light)
Blue Pastures (excerpt from the very end of the essay)
Mary Oliver

Once I was on a boat when a fisherman—a Provincetown man—hauled in an appalling-looking creature: an enormous spider crab, like an angel of desolation, with a domed body a foot across and nearly as high. The long limbs hung limp and were stuck with bits of seaweed and shells, water sluiced out of the vague centrality of its body, between its forelimbs the eyes gazed humbly. The body shell, too, was festooned with fragments of weed and flotsam. The spider crab dresses its body to make a camouflage, reaching back with a limb and daubing itself with whatever materials are lying about. The fisherman sighed and dropped the mess to the bottom of the boat. He knelt, and worked at the hook. “Never take from the sea what you don’t use,” he said, and stood up, and swung the crab over the gunnel.

And once, too, I gave something back. A friend left us a bluefish. I went down to the edge of the water to clean it. When I had scaled and slipped the sharp knife into the bellyfish, it broke open, not from any carelessness of mine but from a fine necessity—the bluefish had been feeding on small fish—sand eels—and its stomach, like a red and tensile purse, was stuffed full. Pieces of sand eels fell out, and among them maybe a half dozen were intact, squirming, unhurt in fact. So quickly, without a moment’s warning, does the miraculous swerve and point to us, demanding that we be its willing servant. Swifter than thought my hands scooped them, and plunged them into the cold water, and the film of their siblings’ death fell from them. For an instant they throbbed in place, too dazed to understand that they could swim back into life—and then they uncurled, like silver leaves, and flashed away.

(Blue Pastures, 1992)


Reflection:
A Note on Mary Oliver Poet, Who Serves as a Guide for the Life of the Spirit

I have been reading the poetry of Mary Oliver, the nature poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. I have been struck by how much she points us toward a life of the spirit (and the flesh, and the mind, and the heart).

A few examples:

I look and I look. In her poem Where does the temple begin, where does it end? Oliver writes: I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. The life of the spirit involves curiosity and awareness. A desire to look, to toss things around and view them from lots of different angles. I am open and receptive. From Oliver: "Looking, I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with arms open." A spirit, an attitude of receptivity is a prerequisite for a life of the spirit.

I am expectant. Oliver: And thinking, maybe something will come...And now I will tell you the truth. Everything in the world comes. At least, closer. And, cordially.

In the Christian tradition, the period of advent and lent serve as a reminder of the power of expectancy. But there are other times as well--the period before one gets married; the period before a special trip. Anticipation is a great teacher and a spirit of expectancy is a spiritual discipline.

I experience the miraculous, rarely perhaps, but sometimes. Oliver tells the story, in her book Blue Pastures, about receiving from a friend a gift of a freshly caught bluefish. She goes out to her deck to the clean the fish and upon a first attempt with the cleaning knife its belly breaks open. Inside are a slew of freshly eaten little eels, some of which, to Oliver's surprise, are intact and unhurt and squirming around.

I respond. I give back. I praise. Oliver scooped them up, the ones alive, and sent them to another chance at life, putting them in the water. And they swam off. As she begins the story, she writes: Once I gave back.
Once I gave back...our examples may not be so dramatic, but we all have experienced the goodness of giving back.

Almost all of Oliver's poems serve as praise. In Why I Wake Early she writes: Hello Sun in my face.best preacher in the world! In another poem she writes: Oh Lord how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.

In This World Oliver writes: So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too, and the ants.

The whole world is praise and praising. I am reminded of the Indigo Girls song City of Angels: I'll be the first to praise the sun. The first to praise the moon. The first to hold the lone coyote. The last to set it free.

I am changed. And I begin to ask questions that matter about myself and the world I help to co-create.
Like Walt Whitman before her, she is going to work and work and work on questions like; What is a soul? What is a prayer?
On this latter question she says: I don't know but I know how to sit still and look at a bit of the grass and the field and the bird.
With Whitman she'll say over and over: For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

In Some Questions You Might Ask Oliver writes; Is the soul solid, like iron?Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl? Who has it, and who doesn't? I keep looking around me.

Her questions and her looking have invited transformation all along the way-at one point in her poetry, she becomes an owl, a bear, she merges into the flesh of another. She grieves in the book Thirst upon the death of her longtime partner. The transformation leads, again and again, back to the poetry of looking, and responding, and praising and asking and soon it is all mixed up, a non-linear life of the spirit.