{"id":6559,"date":"2019-09-27T06:36:06","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T13:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/?p=6559"},"modified":"2019-09-28T07:30:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T14:30:41","slug":"mary-oliver-thirst-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/27\/mary-oliver-thirst-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Oliver – Thirst"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirst
\nby Mary Oliver<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another morning and I wake with thirst
\nfor the goodness I do not have. I walk
\nout to the pond and all the way God has
\ngiven us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
\nI was never a quick scholar but sulked
\nand hunched over my books past the
\nhour and the bell; grant me, in your
\nmercy, a little more time. Love for the
\nearth and love for you are having such a
\nlong conversation in my heart. Who
\nknows what will finally happen or
\nwhere I will be sent, yet already I have
\ngiven a great many things away, expect-
\ning to be told to pack nothing, except the
\nprayers which, with this thirst, I am
\nslowly learning.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a> \u2014 from Thirst: Poems<\/a>, by Mary Oliver<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\/ Image by aeravi<\/a> \/<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

Another morning and I wake with thirst
\nfor the goodness I do not have.<\/i><\/p>\n

I suppose that\u2019s the state of human existence. We wake and the thirst kicks in. There is always something we want, we crave, that somehow is missing but necessary for us to feel whole. Most of the time we don\u2019t really know what that something is. We think it is this or that, this person, that thing, this feeling, that experience. But then, when we attain them, we may go to sleep satisfied but wake up the next morning and thirst again. The thirst remains. And so we refocus it on something else, a new thing, a new experience. And we begin again.<\/p>\n

I walk
\nout to the pond and all the way God has
\ngiven us such beautiful lessons.<\/i><\/p>\n

We start to pay attention (hopefully) and examine the thirst more deeply. This thirst, this ache, resides in a deeper part of ourselves, and it cries out for a deeper connection with reality.<\/p>\n

Like the poet, I tend to find intimations of that deeper reality when I am quiet and surrounded by the rhythms and life of the natural world. I notice that my heart relaxes and opens, and my focus expands. My thoughts become less grasping and more fluid.<\/p>\n

But is that too one more experience held onto, one more fixation that ultimately limits my ability to satisfy the thirst I feel?<\/p>\n

Love for the
\nearth and love for you are having such a
\nlong conversation in my heart.<\/i><\/p>\n

These lines are so interesting. This conversation in the heart between the earth and God might suggest a personal crossroads between life and death. Perhaps it is a health crisis and she does not know if she will live or die and she is trying to make peace with all possibilities.<\/p>\n

We can also read these lines as being about how one balances the love for outer forms and the inner spirit\u2026<\/p>\n

Any experience of beauty and fulfillment requires a delicate touch. If we become attached to its outer form, then the inner, soul-nourishing liquid begins to trickle away. When we say to ourselves, that meditation, that walk, that person, made me feel so wonderful yesterday, so I will repeat it today and tomorrow, then we have lost the essence that fed our spirit. The trick is to recognize the real thing beneath the thing. The real thing is intangible, subtle, fluid, and not contained or limited by the outer form. If it can be grasped or controlled, that\u2019s the husk and not the sweet sap.<\/p>\n

At first this recognition is frustrating. It is like a tug-of-war within the heart, the comfort and familiarity of outer forms everywhere on display upon the face of the earth, with the slow recognition that every form is really just a symbol, an incomplete representation of what lies within. And it\u2019s that inner substance that alone satisfies. The path to mastery, I suspect, is to be able to dowse those secret waterways, remaining undistracted by outer forms and formulations of what has worked in the past. Even patterns of prayer and communion that fed us at one stage can fall barren. We are then challenged to let go of our fixation on the familiar in order to rediscover the sacred directly. For it is that living, nourishing fullness of spirit that is the real and only goal.<\/p>\n

Yet the one is not entirely separate from the other. Landmarks and forms are useful pointers. So we have this dynamic relationship of inner and outer, complimentary and sometimes in conflict.<\/p>\n

Who
\nknows what will finally happen or
\nwhere I will be sent, yet already I have
\ngiven a great many things away, expect-
\ning to be told to pack nothing\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Why then do we so mightily cling to outer things? When that underground flow of life nourishment has moved on, then our focus must move with it. The material things that were once a conduit for us but no longer, let us pass them on for they may feed another. And when we leave the earth, we will still follow that secret flow. The wellspring, not the things that briefly pointed the way to it.<\/p>\n

\u2026except the
\nprayers which, with this thirst, I am
\nslowly learning.<\/i><\/p>\n

Here I am sipping from a tall glass of water watching the sun dance on the leaves of the aspen outside my window. Have a beautiful day!<\/p>\n


\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>Recommended Books: Mary Oliver<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
New and Selected Poems<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nWhy I Wake Early<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nDream Work<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nHouse of Light<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nThirst: Poems<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
More Books >><\/a><\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\"Mary<\/a><\/td>\n\nMary Oliver<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

US (1935 \u2013 2019) Timeline<\/a>
\nSecular or Eclectic<\/a><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/a><\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1935.<\/p>\n

As a young writer, Mary Oliver was influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay and, in fact, as a teenager briefly lived in the home of the recently deceased Millay, helping to organize Millay\u2019s papers.<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver attended college at Ohio State University, and later at Vassar College.<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver\u2019s poetry is deeply aware of the natural world, particularly the birds and trees and ponds of her adopted state of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Her collection of poetry \u201cAmerican Primitive\u201d won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984.<\/p>\n

More poetry by Mary Oliver<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirst by Mary Oliver Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1543,2163,1984,93,1121],"class_list":["post-6559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-attachment","tag-desire","tag-inner-and-outer","tag-mary-oliver","tag-thirst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6559"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6562,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559\/revisions\/6562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}