Most years I re-read Mary Oliver's marvelous book Thirst during Lent.
As the inside flap describes it: "...she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end....she chronicles for the first time her discovery of faith..." Thus, even more apropos this year living under the little cloud of grief that has settled over us from the weeks preceding Lent.
Here's the an excerpt from the first poem, perhaps one of the most well-known of this collection.
"Messenger"
My work is loving the world...
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished...."
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