One fruit of our congregation's CCD team discussions is a series of online "Poetry and Prayer" gatherings. We met during Advent, 8:30-9:00 on four Monday mornings, and have resumed it for the Mondays of Lent. The organizer chooses a poem for each session, which, after a little silence, is read by two different people, one or both of whom then offer reflections. Other participants then share thoughts and reactions, before we close. Usually with about a dozen people, it's a lovely space, surprisingly profound for its small size.
Today's was a short poem by Mary Oliver, suitably entitled "Praying."
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
The first reader/commenter pronounced this was the "New York City poem" she'd been looking for! She'd thought she was the only person who paid attention to vacant lots. Others appreciated "just / pay attention" and "this isn't a contest" and "a doorway / into thanks" and the quiet miracle of "another voice." I reflected on how "a few / small stones" prefigure the push to "patch // a few words together." (I tend to be the animist in this group, seeing our human feelings and noticings and doings anticipated in the more-than-human world.) But all of us found ourselves thinking about the poetry of overlooked, perhaps unbeautiful city scenes as "silence[s] in which / another voice may speak."
What about those ugly piles of dirty snow, someone mentioned, and I had to share that I find them beautiful, have a phoneful of images of them - and shared two you've seen (the second and third from here). The unexpected multimedia turn was warmly appreciated. "One of those could be something a gallery in Chelsea," the organizer enthused. As I tried to articulate how hard it was not to sense design and intention in the way seeds and twigs and grit were lined up as the snow melted, the initial reader/commenter had an epiphany: all the things that wind up in the snow are distributed on the ground in a new way as it melts.
patch // a few stones together and don't try / to make them elaborate !
