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The Summer Day
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
The Summer Day Rev. David A. Morris Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Outer Banks August 5, 2018
For most people, I suspect, and certainly for me, it’s the last few lines of Mary Oliver’s poem that resonate most powerfully. Speaking as if to someone who might be chiding her for squandering her day so wastefully, strolling idly through the fields and contemplating the chewing grasshopper, she says,
Tell me, what else should I have done?
.... Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
It’s a wonderful, blunt challenge flung in the face of a culture that measures the value of human beings by our worth as units in the productivity of the economy of commerce and industry. The habit carries over from our workdays to pervade every aspect of our lives, where we’ve learned to measure the quality of a day by what we’ve accomplished. It’s been a good morning, we say, I got a lot done. Tough day yesterday, we say, just couldn’t seem to make progress on anything.
How can you justify a whole day spent walking on the beach or wandering around the woods? Did you at least collect some good beach glass you could make into something, or pick up some litter, or clear out that place where the path has gotten so overgrown? Did you walk fast enough to burn off some extra calories, or get some aerobic benefit? At least that would be productive!
Wendell Berry’s “Mad Farmer Liberation Front” warns us of the dire consequences that await if we fall for the idolatry of productivity.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
Oh no, Mary Oliver says. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
the privilege of being able to afford unlimited hours of leisure time; nor do I think she means that we should all become writers, artists, contemplative spiritual teachers, professional intellectuals, religious leaders, astrophysicists, and other professionals whose work specifically demands that they spend their time thinking in the largest possible context, seeking the great presence of the sacred or the ultimate in every working moment.
“The Summer Day” is not a poem about disengaging from the world; it’s about engaging with it—fully, whole-heartedly, passionately, without reserve.
The contemplative spiritual teacher and writer Gerald May, in his book The Awakened Heart , said this:
“... now and then in especially graced moments, a flash of truly unconditional love bursts through me.... In that flash, my actions are determined neither by my conscience nor by my desire. They come from pure, simple loving responsiveness to the needs of the situation at hand.”
Theologian Frederick Buechner says it even more simply: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”
What would it mean if the purpose of our lives, the standard measure of our productivity, was pure, simple loving responsiveness to the needs of the situation at hand? How might we then choose to spend our one wild and precious life?
What would it mean, what would it feel like, to notice the need of whatever moment we find ourselves in, and to respond to it lovingly with all the energy of our being?
What does a simple, loving responsiveness ask of us, what does it feel like—
When we notice that our own families need us to provide economic sustenance, yes, but also to offer our tender attention and empathy, our companionship and vulnerability?
What does a simple, loving responsiveness ask of us, what does it feel like—
When we recognize the people at work around us, not just as helpful or difficult partners in churning out the various tasks at hand but as companions whose lives are touched and affected by ours, just as our lives are touched by theirs?
What does that loving responsiveness feel like when we realize that neighbors, friends, even loved ones have grown so broken and blinded by fear and misunderstanding that they have closed their hearts to the degradation of our nation?
What does loving responsiveness ask of us, when we learn that children are being hurt and terrorized, that parents are being brutally subjected to their worst nightmare, because they have committed the crime of trying to flee from intolerable danger to a country—to our country— where they thought they would find shelter and compassion?
Turning aside from the dogmas of productivity and accomplishment that drive our money- worshipping society also means freeing ourselves from the idea that our engagement with the world’s deep hunger, as Buechner calls it, or even with the everyday needs of the workaday world, has to produce measurable achievements and results in order to justify the effort. Oliver’s invitation, I think, is for us instead to see our own full immersion in the reality of the moment, and our own experience of the presence of the Sacred even in the most mundane or the most harrowing of events, as the point and the measure of the worthiness of our engagement.
We don’t need to “succeed.” We need to engage.
I don’t really think we can live all the time at the pitch of ecstasy and immersion that a poet reaches at the height of composition in a poem. Still, we can listen and tune ourselves some part of every day for the presence and the call of whatever power we believe is behind this world and this life. We can find moments to allow ourselves to be transfixed, moved, drawn irresistibly into the delights, the sorrows, and the needs of the life that surrounds us all the time. We can respond lovingly to the needs of the situation at hand.
At the end of this or any day, we can invite ourselves to ask a different set of questions from the usual round about what we managed to get done today.
How alive was I today? How much love did I share, how much did I offer? How much time did I spend noticing the preciousness and beauty and wonder all around me? How often did I notice the preciousness and beauty and wonder within me? How, today, did I meet the deep hunger of the world? What have I done, today, with my one wild and precious life? What will I do with it tomorrow?
May this day—may every day, whatever its needs and demands—be for you and for us all a gift and a blessing.
