instructions

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver reminds me
to let go of any need that might linger in me
to try, even a little, to impress anyone.
Instead to stay alert to the extravagant impressiveness around me,
puddling at my feet,
drowning my life with goodness.
To be easily astonished,
easily filled with wonder,
to let life boggle my mind.
To stay a child of joy and nature,
a collector of miracles.
To stay in awe of sunsets
and dandelions, butterflies,
coffee shops
and grasshoppers.
To gasp every time I get a view of the ocean,
and be breathless at the view from a mountaintop road at sunset.
To thrill when I see a  leaf change color.
To crane my neck, every single time, to catch a glimpse of sunlight on water,
and the curve of a babies cheek.
To get a chill of macabre delight
at gnarly, old toenails,
and bats hanging upside down
in a dark damp cave,
or flying around a street light as darkness falls slowly,
softly through the air.
Such things keep me alive.
Even on the dark days, the days of great trouble.
These are the true riches of my living.
Extreme miracles everywhere around me.
We are here to witness,
here to share descriptions of such beauty,
even our feeble attempts are so amazing
they boggle the mind.
Thank you, Mary Oliver, for your reminder,
with your every beautiful, glorious word.
For knowing we are each here to do our part,
to record our miracles
in our own voices,
pens,
paints,
dances,
lyrics,
artistry,
we make up the great tapestry,
recording the blazing glory,
of this astonishing, mind-blowing masterpiece.
We each add unique notes to the grand symphony,
allowing the rocks to stay silent
{ at least for those who
don’t care to hear their exquisite, out-of-this-world music,
playing with such brilliance, light and passion,
everywhere we go }

❤

Amy Lloyd

“Proceed as the way opens…”

is a Quaker axiom which is defined as:
“To undertake a service or course of action
without prior clarity about all the details but with confidence that divine guidance will make these apparent, and assure an appropriate outcome.”

1.

Something came up

out of the dark.

It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.

It wasn’t an animal

or a flower,

unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,

a head the size of a cat

but muddy and without ears.

I don’t know what God is.

I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them

some fervent and necessary arrangement.

2.

Sometime

melancholy leaves me breathless…

3.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!

Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.

The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

4.

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

5.

Two or three times in my life I discovered love.

Each time it seemed to solve everything.

Each time it solved a great many things

but not everything.

Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and

thoroughly, solved everything.

6.

God, rest in  my heart

and fortify me,

take away my hunger for answers,

let the hours play upon my body

like the hands of my beloved.

Let the cathead appear again-

the smallest of your mysteries,

some wild cousin of my own blood probably-

some cousin of my own wild blood probably,

in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

7.

Death waits for me, I know it, around

one corner or another.

This doesn’t amuse me.

Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.

It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.

I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.

❤

Sometimes by Mary Oliver