{"id":473,"date":"2019-01-22T19:44:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T02:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zqe.rfn.mybluehost.me\/blog\/?p=473"},"modified":"2023-10-10T21:23:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T04:23:59","slug":"loving-the-mystery-mary-olivers-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/loving-the-mystery-mary-olivers-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Loving the mystery: Mary Oliver’s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve been reflecting deeply on Mary Oliver\u2019s love and mastery of the art of questioning\u200a\u2014\u200aeverything.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

In this 2001 interview<\/a> of her by Coleman Barks, they both intentionally invoke the intimate, numinous space of not knowing.<\/p>\n

Coleman Barks:<\/em> \u201c\u2026her text is full of huge, imponderable, unanswerable questions like, What am I supposed to do?\u2026I love those questions that she fills her poems with and they leave me opened and empty and pleased to have no answers. Is that the way you want it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver: <\/em>\u201cThat\u2019s absolutely the way I want it\u2026. So many of us live most of our lives seeking the answerable and somehow demeaning or bypassing those things that can\u2019t be answered and therefore denuding one\u2019s life of the acceptance of mystery and the pleasure of mystery and the willingness to live with mystery is greatly what I think about. And if I could do something for people I would say, don\u2019t forget the mystery. Love the mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the most intimate moments of invoking that mystery, I have read aloud \u201cThe Summer Day<\/a>\u201d to someone poised to design their Life Intention, a question big enough to live with their entire lives. Especially poignant are these lines:<\/p>\n

\u201cI do know how to pay attention, how to fall down in the grass,
\nhow to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
\nwhich is what I have been doing all day.
\nTell me, what else should I have done?
\nDoesn\u2019t everything die at last, and too soon?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to write that Mary Oliver died too soon, but even though so many of us would like her to live forever, to go on marveling and questioning, we know it\u2019s her poems that are immortal. Besides, she\u2019s left us a map of sorts. All we have to do is go for a walk in nature where the sacred is waiting to inscribe our own hearts with \u201csuch wild love,\u201d just as it did hers.<\/p>\n

What a well-designed life Mary Oliver lived. She embodied the transformative state of being that I call \u201cdesign consciousness.\u201d By channeling together her experiences with nature, spirit, humanity, and time into one ecstatic verse after another, meaning flowed into us and around us. Offered up in sweet meanders and surging swells, the wisdom she gleaned from the mystery is ours for the taking. We simply have to ask.<\/p>\n

In Sea Change Design<\/a>, questions are elemental, omnipresent, and irresistible. Because every transformation begins with an intention, which always begins with an inquiry.<\/p>\n

In coaching sessions, in college classrooms, in corporate workshops, in interactive keynotes, it\u2019s always the same. No matter what kind of intention is being designed, or what change is deeply desired, when I speak that poem\u2019s riveting last line, there comes the almost inaudible intake of breath, that pause when everything is possible, if only we are willing to ponder Mary Oliver\u2019s extraordinary question,<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me, what is it you plan to do
\nwith your one wild and precious life?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In her poem, \u201cMysteries, Yes\u201d Mary Oliver writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me keep my distance, always, from those
\nwho think they have the answers.
\nLet me keep company always with those who say
\n\u201cLook!\u201d and laugh in astonishment,
\nand bow their heads.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Beloved Mary Oliver, what a beautiful blessing you bequeath us. May you revel in the mystery of eternity. Know that your legacy of words and wonder will continue to amaze us. Spring<\/a> will be here soon, and we will learn to appreciate, like you and the black bear touching the grass, \u201cThere is only one question; how to love this world.\u201d<\/p>\n

My head is bowed.<\/p>\n

______
\n\u201c<\/em>Listening to the World<\/em><\/a>,\u201d Krista Tippet\u2019s OnBeing interview of Mary Oliver is a keeper. As is The New Yorker article by Ruth Franklin, \u201c<\/em>What Mary Oliver\u2019s Critics Don\u2019t Understand<\/em><\/a>.\u201d And then there\u2019s Brain Pickings by Maria Popova: \u201c<\/em>The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist\u2019s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life<\/em><\/a>.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reflecting deeply on Mary Oliver\u2019s love and mastery of the art of questioning\u200a\u2014\u200aeverything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1667,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,15,7,16,38,18],"tags":[43,52,51,54,53],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-design-consciousness","category-humanity","category-intention","category-nature","category-poetry","category-spirituality","tag-design","tag-life","tag-mary-oliver","tag-mystery","tag-questions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seachangedesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}