Love

I’ve continued my morning cafe ritual of mining Mary Oliver’s poems for writing prompts. Here are a few:

~ Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives

~ As if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt

~ Bringing home such happiness in their small hands

~ And what, moreoever, is catastrophe? Is it the sharp sword of God, or just some other wild body living its life?

~ I swung the door open and there was the wordless singing world

~ If the heart has devoted itself to love, there is not a single inch of emptiness

I love this woman – I love her writing – I love that she speaks of spending an entire afternoon lying in the grass listening to birdsong and becoming the grass, the bird, the sun, the wind. I feel affirmed in my own relationship to the world in her willingness to experience and write.

Last night I wrote to Connee, “I thought about how you can “fill” a jar with pebbles, and then you can add to that jar and “fill” it again with sand, and then you can again add to that jar and “fill” it with water … and I realized that I feel so full with all that I experience each day. The busy-ness I enjoy, the quiet time I enjoy, the people time I enjoy, playing my guitar and singing, meeting a friend for coffee or a walk, napping, cooking tasty and healthy meals, listening to a friend play their music, my conversations with Rose, my evening walks, all of it fills me entirely. As Mary Oliver says “there is not a single inch of emptiness” – and still I have room to continue to be filled.

These are the words that spoke to me this morning, “there isn’t anything in this world but mad love. Not in this world. No tame love, calm love, mild love, no so-so love. And, of course, no reasonable love. Also, there are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?“

Not me. I don’t want easier. I want unreasonable love – abandoned love – wild and sweet love. In every aspect of my life. I have it in so many ways as I move through my days here. I find myself choosing this .. and not that … solely because of how I love. This is an entirely new dance for me. Sometimes I misstep, I misspeak, I am perhaps too abandoned. That’s okay. Those who choose to love me, love me for all of me – the perfect and the imperfect – as I love them the same way.