Mary Oliver
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I have been living, savoring the moments of married children home for weddings, holiday celebrations, late night games and talks, traveling and staying put, eating, loving, caring for the sick, pushing off the extraneous, the many emails pilling up like leaves in my inbox, and fronting “only the essential facts of life,” as Thoreau so…
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Moving into a new week, I find Mary Oliver’s poetry rich with invitations to live life more fully, to deepen in the places where we have been planted, and to radiate joy in the midst of suffering, remembering our part in the glorious tapestry of life. I almost packed a few poems into this post,…
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Midsummer passed without much fanfare. Yet for me, it’s a harbinger of late summer and the beginning of another school year. Like nearly every summer, the days flit by without much structure, despite attempts to bring order to the wonderful chaos, and now I begin to feel that growing sense of unpreparedness. I haven’t even…
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Between getting the budget lined up for March, paying my regular bills, and working on filing my taxes, I somehow lost the weekend and suffocated my soul. All I wanted to do last night was crawl into bed and just go to sleep, but I took the time to drink from Mary Oliver’s poetry. There’s…
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In the midst of my series of Advent Tankas, I still wanted to share this Mary Oliver gem that I read a few weeks ago thanks to an email thread I receive at work. Though the snows have already arrived here in Grove City, it’s not until Wednesday that Winter officially begins. As we head…
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Fall and Mary Oliver today. From a wonderful collection of poetry titled Why I Wake Early. Admittedly, waking early isn’t in my vocabulary, save for the demand my job puts upon me as a high school English teacher. But for sights such as these, I would race the sun out of bed, “[t]o love what…
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Summer draws to a close, a new week begins, and I return to the deepening ground of Mary Oliver’s poetry. Hear the invitation to spend our lives “on some / unstinting happiness,” but not according to the world’s definition. Rather, the simple overlooked gifts that poets like Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry capture so beautifully.…
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As I sat in bed last night, debating between Marilynne Robinson’s Home, Andrew Klavan’s The Truth and Beauty, or Mary Oliver’s Devotions, I eventually settled on Oliver’s collection of poems. Sleep would be coming quick, so a poem or two felt like a safe bet, especially when Robinson’s novel doesn’t include any chapter breaks (sheer…
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Spring is in the air! Here in Western Pennsylvania today, the temperature reached 71 degrees. We opened the windows and savored the fresh air and song of the birds. It reminded me of a welcomed distraction from earlier this week when I sat down to breakfast: a finch singing from my neighbor’s porch. And though…
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And so it comes to a close… Another summer wraps up within the next ten hours for me. Tomorrow morning, I will rise in the dark of a new day, put on my dress clothes, perhaps even don a tie, and head back to the high school where I have served as an English teacher…
the deepening ground 