Evidence by Mary Oliver (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009)

Poets and mystics have a lot in common. They both work at seeing into the hidden mysteries of ordinary things that surround us every day. And while we are madly chasing wooden carousel creatures around in endless circles, they are watching a world bloom in bliss before us. Mary Oliver is a bit of both. Evidence opens simply enough with a poem called “Yellow.”

There is the heaven we enter/through institutional grace/and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing/in the lowly puddle.

The gift we are given in Evidence is the chance to see as the poets and mystics see. To see the sacred in those things we take for granted. To come alive with the vision of Japanese maples turned red along city streets or the Petaluma hills turned green by early October rains.

There was a man sitting in a room watching a documentary on television about Yosemite National Park, and he longed to be there in the midst of its grandeur and beauty. Outside his window, if only he would pull aside the drapes, was the real Yosemite.

Turn off your televisions!

In “The River Clarion,” Oliver writes: 

Of course for each of us, there is the daily life./Let us live it, gesture by gesture./When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?/And should we not thank the knife also?/We do not live in a simple world.

How many of us are unhappy with our lives and who we are? How much time, money and energy do we spend trying to get somewhere else that is better than where we are or trying to be someone else who is better than who we are? Is our unhappiness the result of where or who we are or, instead, the result of chasing wooden carousel creatures around in endless circles? We may be wasting our lives waiting in long lines for institutional grace while ignoring the bliss that puddles offer us.

Be yellow finches!

Do you remember when you first felt mud squishing up between your toes as a child? When was the last time you stuck your head outside the car window like a dog and smelled the wet fragrance of a forest? Shouted in church? Ran through the park singing? Given thanks for a slice of melon?

Poetry like Mary Oliver’s demands that we pull back from our busy lives and spend some time by the side of a river. To listen to “tongues of stones, in the restless waters.” It doesn’t even have to be a river. It could be anything. The sacred isn’t in a box. Pull back the curtains and look outside your window.