the deepening ground

For Father’s Day, my daughter went hunting for hawks among the poetry of Mary Oliver. (She knows my affinity for those majestic birds of prey.) Instead, she found the wonder of the spoken word in the poem below. Somehow I read past this piece in my collection of Oliver’s poems without marking it with a book dart. (Shocking!) In a world that spends far too much time feeding us fatalistic images and encouraging us to worry about every worst case scenario, Oliver offers the refreshing perspective that I hear echoed in Isaiah 26:3 – “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!” (NLT) The word translated “thoughts” can also be translated as “creative imaginings.” Rather than wasting my time on words and images of death, destruction, and dismay, I choose to meditate on “what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable … things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” (Philippians 4:8, NLT). On this day of rest, come with wonder again to the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the wonder of Jesus speaking, and the wonder of “each spoken word / spoken with love.”

Logos by Mary Oliver

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

From Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. Page 179.