Devotions by Mary Oliver

noticing as a gratitude practice

I’m still trying to figure out my personal gratitude practices, both for November and everyday life. I’ve tried gratitude journals and social media challenges. I’ve tried gratitude-only prayers, choosing to only thank God when I pray instead of asking for things. I’ve tried gratitude meditations. Once, at a youth conference, I was given two pennies to stick in my shoe—this was supposed to remind me to find two things to thank God for every time I noticed them. As someone with high levels of sensory sensitivity, that made me insane and decidedly ungrateful.

Research tells us gratitude makes us happier. I don’t have any examples of said research at my fingertips to convince you, but I’m certain you’ve seen the same articles I have. I have accordingly tried to program it into my life the way I try to program all of my good habits. I dearly love to write things in my color-coded planner and check them off. However, when gratitude is an item on a checklist, it tends to ring hollow.

I first learned of Mary Oliver in early 2016, long before I had much interest in poetry. A friend shared her On Being interview with me, telling me it had changed her life. In retrospect, it might have changed my life, too, although the change was quiet and gradual, as is Mary Oliver’s way.

Oliver writes simple, starkly lovely poetry—poetry the MFA bros might snarkily call “accessible,” which is my favorite kind—centered around her observations of nature. In her interview, she speaks of walking in the woods daily and writing as she goes, pulling truth and beauty from sights most of us would pass over, unnoticed.

Around the time I heard of Mary Oliver, I finally read Walden by Henry David Thoreau (something I’d been attempting since high school). One of the passages that has stayed with me is one in which Thoreau watches ants battle each other to the death near a woodpile (you can read the scene here). He commented on how humans seek entertainment, but if we slowed down and noticed what was around us, we would be drawn in by the many tiny dramas unfolding in the natural world. (I later found myself thinking of this scene again when I was stuck inside with no power during Hurricane Florence—we had a bird feeder suctioned to the window, and several battles occurred during the heavy downpour as the birds tried to assert their dominance over the tiny spot of shelter.)

Oliver wrote many books, but my favorite collection is Devotions, which pulls selections from several of her books. Each poem reads like a little prayer—and each poem stems from careful observation of the natural world, of taking the time to notice and engage with the quiet business of the earth, which is easily ignored or filtered out by all the other distractions clamoring for our attention.

I’m not a minimalist or a Luddite. It’s not popular to admit this, but I massively enjoy using social media, and I feel more comfortable with a little clutter than I do with clean, simple, white lines. However, the moment that all becomes too unbalanced for me is the moment when I fail to notice what’s around me—the dewdrops on the spider web on the hedge in our backyard, the way my kids’ faces shift slightly as they grow, the colors in the west at dusk (even when dusk is at 4:45 p.m.). Mary Oliver’s work is a celebration of noticing, and I read Devotions every morning with my daily psalm and other scripture reading to remind me of that.

To close out this newsletter, I’m including a few favorites from Devotions. I’d love if you’d share other poetry or art that helps you remember to notice or be grateful in the comments. Happy Thanksgiving!

I Wake Close to Morning
Why do people keep asking to see
      God's identity papers
when the darkest opening into morning 
     is more than enough?
Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.
Think of Sheba approaching
     the kingdom of Solomon. 
Do you think she had to ask,
     "Is this the place?" 

From "On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate"
4.
How many mysteries have you seen in your 
     lifetime? How many nets pulled
full over the boat's side, each silver body 
     ready or not falling into
submission? How many roses in early summer
     uncurling above the pale sands then

falling back in unfathomable
     willingness? And what can you say? Glory
to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the
     silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields, 
and to joy. And to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon.

The Roses
One day in summer
when everything
has already been more than enough
the wild beds start
exploding open along the berm
of the sea; day after day
the honey keeps on coming
in the red cups and the bees
like amber drops roll
in the petals; there is no end,
believe me! to the inventions of summer,
to the happiness your body
is willing to bear.

When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn; 
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; 
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, 
and I look upon time as no more than an idea, 
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular, 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, 
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something 
precious to the earth. 

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument. 

I don't want to end up simply having visited the world.