Five Minute Friday: Influence

I’m writing today’s post as part of the Five Minute Friday online writing community. Learn more here: http://fiveminutefriday.com/linkup. This week’s writing prompt is INFLUENCE.

I know, you never intended to be in this/world. / But you’re in it all the same. // So why not get started immediately. // I mean, belonging to it. / There is so much to admire, to weep over. // And to write music or poems about.  –Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

It’s fitting that today’s word is influence, as the news of Mary Oliver’s death yesterday has me considering the profound influence her words have had on so many.

In listening again to Krista Tippett’s 2015 interview with Mary, I’m recalling how Mary’s practice of spending time outside paying attention (the practice that birthed her poetry) was born of a need to escape from the house of her childhood and all the pain and sorrow that she experienced there. Her influence, then–the words that have accompanied and inspired and encouraged and consoled  so many–emerged from suffering and heartache.

There is much in this world to grieve. There is also so very much to celebrate, appreciate, praise, honor. As Mary herself wrote, There is so much to admire, to weep over.

How do our experiences of suffering and heartache become fertile ground for poetry, for song, for awareness of God’s grace all around us? How does grief open our eyes to see joy?

I’ll close today with a poem I wrote last spring, influenced by Mary Oliver. It’s entitled, Birdsong Alleluia.

If the snow were any match

for the strength of April’s sun…

If the sky weren’t endless blue,

clouds undone and on the run…

If the love that lifts us all

weren’t already on the ground–

grace incarnate, mercy’s deed,

flowing river winding round,

pulsing with the truth I’ve seen

and sung

countless times before,

always when it seems an end

what is real is something more:

rainbow arc from pulsing rain

brilliant bloom from blank decay

life from vestiges of grief

hope from endless shades of grey…

…then birdsong alleluia

would have gone unheard today.

I’d have knelt at the altar of despair

and left my offering there.

Instead I raise my newfound voice

with cardinal and robin,

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Praise the God of resurrection! 

**Listen to Krista Tippett’s interview with Mary Oliver here: https://onbeing.org.