Mary Oliver Reflection

Mary Oliver’s poem captures feelings of my own faith-journey. Like tectonic plates gathering energy over time, once-solid and rarely questioned bedrock scrapes against the rawness of life, causing subtle (or not so subtle) changes in the shape of things.

For better or worse, I tend to speak up now, where I once remained quiet. If my words offend or fall short, I’m sorry. When reading them, I’m never satisfied either, but they at least reflect something of where I was at the moment of their writing. ~Kindly

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

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