Just Stop Worrying
Great Blue Heron Landing, photo by Stephen Fine
I’ve been reading a lot from the poet Mary Oliver. There are so many of her marvelous poems swirling around these days, surely because of a fine documentary aired last week. One of her poems, “I Worried,” strikes a chord with me right now.
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
I know this kind of worrying. I worry about our horrific world, about a disintegrating culture, about growing older, about losing friends, about struggling to climb stairs. Statistics tell us this worrying is spreading around like a flu bug.
And I too have concluded I must stop it, for goodness sakes. I too dream about walking out into the morning and singing like a bird. This requires real change, transformation, actually. But I don’t think the poet gets us there.
I have also been turning these days to the wonderful poet Wendell Berry, who, as you must be aware, died this last week at the age of 92. What a loss for all of us. From his extensive writings over so many years, Berry worries too about a lot of things, that we have abandoned deeper patterns for how to live, things like living close to the land. We have succumbing to the machine’s way of ordering things. Most of all he worries what we are becoming now that we can no longer imagine a God who comes close to us.
Listen to this beautiful poem, “The Peace Of Wild Things”:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Berry tells us to go lie down in the beauty of the wild things. Notice his spiritual language: we will come into the “presence of still water,” we wait for the star’s light we know is coming, we “rest in the grace of the world” that God freely offers. Keep watching as the Heron comes to a landing.
Yes, rest, I am trying to learn better how to rest. To get there I’ve been learning how to pray more deeply. Jesus tells us to “come to me, all who are weary and whose load is heavy; I will give you rest.” Learn my way that is “gentle and humble-hearted; and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 (REB) Wow, Jesus invites us to come closer, daily, and find the rest he is offering.
I have just finished re-reading Henri Nouwen’s The Way Of The Heart. My cover page tells me this is my seventh reading. The way we must learn to pray, says Nouwen, is from the heart, not so much the way of the head. This is “a prayer of rest. . . . It is a rest in God in the midst of a very intense daily struggle.” A prayer of rest, that’s it.
It dawns on me that Jesus will hold us up like birds across the sky and shine over us like lilies in the fields, without a single day of worry. (Mattheew 6:25-29) We lift our eyes up from our petty stewing, our anxious thought, and we too can start soaring and singing and resting. Give me this rest, Lord Jesus. Let me sing, let me soar.