Mary Oliver finds Easter holiness in a new born fawn.
Tag Archives: Mary Oliver
Such Singing in the Wild Branches
On a beautiful spring morning when she is startled by birdsong, Mary Oliver describes a merging with nature where she “began to understand what the bird was saying.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Spring", "Such Singing in the Wild Branches", Intimations of Immortality, Nature, William Wordsworth Comments closed
The Black Honey of Summer
My son’s marriage proposal to his Trinidadian girlfriend has become bound up in my mind with a Mary Oliver poem about blackberries.
Nothing So Sensible as Sensual Inundation
Poetry, with its eye on what really matters, can help us taste food again. Mary Oliver’s “Plum Trees” reminds us to eat with full awareness.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Plum Trees", Andrew Marvell, Food, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Sensuality, T. S. Eliot, To His Coy Mistress Comments closed
Pretty Is Not What Blazes the Trail
As the ice (or “iron rind”) starts dissolving from the ponds, we may dream of “ferns and flowers and new leaves unfolding.” But the transition from winter to spring is a much grittier affair, characterized less by sweetness and more by lurid smells emerging from chilling mud. The real harbinger of spring may not be the bluebird but the skunk cabbage, celebrated by Mary Oliver in a powerful poem.
From Spiritual Hunger to Obesity Epidemic
Spiritual Sunday My wife Julia has been telling me about a book that she’s reading, Geneen Roth’s Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. The thesis of the book seems to be that overeating, like other compulsions and obsessions, is a means of escaping a spiritual emptiness. Or to put it another […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "When Death Comes", Dubliners, Emptiness, English Patient, Hunger, James Joyce, Michael Ondaatje, Nikos Kazantzakis, Religion, Spirituality, Zorba the Greek Comments closed
Life Storming Out of the Darkness
Spiritual Sunday Today Western Christians observe Pentecost, the day 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection and 10 days after his ascension into heaven. Pentecost celebrates the moment when the disciplines saw themselves surrounded by tongues of fire and felt lifted up by the Holy Spirit. In the Book of John (14:16) Jesus is reported to have promised the […]
