Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver
(Hat tip to All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church – this poem was in today’s sermon on the spiritual lessons of failure. Emphasis below is mine.)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
+ + +
I’ve been reading and reflecting quite a bit on the nature of the self lately – an inquiry triggered, mostly, by the texts I’m reading as part of my yoga teacher training . One author, Baron Baptiste, asserts that we’re all like Michelangelo’s sculptures: our true nature already exists, we just need to take away the excess clay (ie, psychic baggage) in order to reveal ourselves. Do you think this is right? Is our challenge as creative people and spiritual seekers to peel away the layers that obscure our true natures? Or, is our job to design who we want to be, and move towards that vision?
Certainly, Oliver’s poem argues for the former. We are who we are. We need not be anything else – anything more. I can’t tell if that’s an inspiring message, or a depressing one. And what does it mean for those of us who thrive on the process of creation?
I could list dozens more questions here that are richocheting through my brain, but the main question I want to pose to all of you is this:
Do you think you generally accept yourself as you are, and channel your creativity towards tangible output; or do you think you channel most of your creative energy towards yourself and your life? And, as you reflect on this – are you generally satisfied with where your creative energy goes?
As that great spiritual guru Linda Richman would say: Discuss.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
great question (and point of departure).
After consistently creating tangible output for years, over the last year all creative energy has gone into creating a new art program at a local nonprofit, teaching classes and organizing. Supporting others in their creativity and making the environments for it, but my own work and personal projects have suffered and it is unsustainable.