Monday Morning Musing: Looking (way) Ahead

Last week I heard a sermon that has stayed with me. This isn't always the case, even when I'm the one preaching!

In this sermon, Bishop Dave Nagler of the Pacifica Synod did a masterful job of weaving reflections from today's Gospel reading, which is Matthew's version of Jesus calling James, John, Simon, and Andrew to put down their nets and follow him, with the line from Mary Oliver's Poem "The Summer Day". That line has been used in many places, and asks the question: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. In my younger days I imagined that I had lots of time to figure out the answer to that question. And now, now, the question takes on an urgency that I imagine the poet herself intended.

I don't have answers just yet, although so far I've been fairly glad about what I've done with this life. I have cherished children, a beloved partner on this journey, dear friends, and some things I've accomplished of which I am proud. But for the days that are left? That is still something I'm pondering.

So, for this Monday Morning, I share with you that Mary Oliver poem. And I share her question, tell me, what is it YOU plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver