Spiritual Sunday
As today’s Gospel reading is Jesus inviting Peter and Andrew to follow him and become “fishers of men” (“fish for people” in the New International Version), I share a Mary Oliver fish poem. It took me a while to realize how religious a poet Oliver because they seldom resorts to religious terminology. Nevertheless, I think “The Fish” is, among other things, a description of the eucharist.
My sister-in-law Elizabeth Barrett, who is an enthusiastic Unitarian Universalist, has a self-deprecating UU joke involving Oliver. UUs are so open to the wisdom literature of all faiths, Mohammed or Buddha no less than Jesus, that Elizabeth says they wired with an automatic translation system. If they are asked, for instance, whether they accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, they hear, “Are you inspired by the poetry of Mary Oliver?” and readily answer, “Yes!”
Oliver was herself a practicing Episcopalian but I agree with Elizabeth that the poet translates well across faiths. She especially falls within an American literary tradition, seen also in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson, of finding God in nature. In “The Fish,” one encounters images of violence and death follow by an initiation into mystery. In the eucharist, we symbolically devour the flesh of Christ and drink of his blood in order that we may be one with him.
The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.
