I wrote this essay four years ago and just came across it again today. The situation in our country has only become more brutal and the need for otherness more great. So here it is again.

Finding Otherness

The other night, I decided that I needed a break from Facebook. I finally hit the tipping point and could no longer absorb one more minute of the hatred and vitriol brought out by this election. Every day, I would see something more disturbing than the day before. The basest part of our humanity is being exposed and I worry that it threatens our country’s decency and integrity. Shaking, I turned off the computer and walked away.

Some might say this is irresponsible, that I should stay in and add something positive to the conversation. But this is a conversation that has no resolution. Hate breeds more hate which breeds more hate until reason is completely lost. I needed to step back and focus on something else.

In her recent book of essays, “Upstream”, Mary Oliver talks about how, as a child, she found two things that could take her beyond her own difficult circumstances- the natural world and the world of literature. “These were the gates through which I vanished from a difficult place,” she writes.

Ah, yes. Mary Oliver’s poetry immerses us in the natural world. Time and again, I have been amazed and startled by how her poetry speaks right to me, connecting inner and outer worlds.

She goes on to say that “the world’s otherness is antidote for confusion, that standing within this otherness- the beauty and mystery of the world, out in fields or deep inside books- can re-dignify the worst stung heart.” In further essays, Oliver goes on to describe many of her friends, both in nature- forests and foxes, turtles, spiders, seagulls and owls- and in literature- Whitman, Emerson, Poe and Wordsworth.

About the writers, she says, “I never met any of my friends, of course, in the usual way. They were strangers and lived only in their writing. But if they were only shadow-companions, still they were constant, and powerful, and amazing. That is, they said amazing things, and for me it changed the world.”

The other night when, overwhelmed and shaking from the disturbing things I’d seen, I picked up this book (which I have since read in its entirety, but which at the time I had barely started) and held it open in my lap. I was too upset to actually read the words, but I knew that there was a promise here.

You see, Mary Oliver has been a shadow-companion to me for many years. When I read her poetry, it feels like she is encouraging me along, providing comfort and challenge. I have been writing poetry for over thirty years. I have spent way too much of that time arguing with myself about the worthiness of such an endeavor and whether what I write has any value. Still, I wrote and wrote, but shared very little.

Mary Oliver comforted me with this poem:

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I Want to Write Something So Simply

I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think—
no, you will realize—
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your heart
had been saying.

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And this poem:

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Wild Geese

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.

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I kept writing. She encouraged me along with this poem:

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Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

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.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

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And this poem:

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When I am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

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I kept writing. But then she challenged me with this poem:

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The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

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I could hardly read those last lines. Her challenge overwhelmed me. What was it I planned to do with my one wild and precious life? Now that my kids were raised, I had no idea how to get from where I was at that time, with a to-do list longer than the hours in a day, to where I wanted to be, with the time and focus to be in the otherness and to write.

But she planted a seed. At a moment when “my truth was elusive”, I could live “many hours within the circle of her certainty.” Slowly, but surely, with the realization that I am not getting any younger, I have followed my own truth.

In May, I retired from my job. A month or so later, I made an deal with God. I would do what it took to share my poetry- I created a blog and a Facebook page and I post a poem each week- and God would take it from there. I don’t have much of a following, but there are a few loyal souls. Anyway, that is not my part of the deal. That is God’s realm.

Sometimes, however, being in this public arena is terrifying. Sometimes, like the other night, I am just overwhelmed by it.

So, thank you, Mary Oliver, who I never met and probably never will, for once again providing me with an otherness that was an antidote to my confusion. One more time, by reading what you wrote, I was lifted from fear and difficulty both within and without.

There will always be people in the world who will do disturbing, hateful, harmful things and spread the distortions that they have allowed to grow in themselves. However, my concern is for the people I know and love, who I know to have good hearts, but have gotten caught up in the hateful reverie. It is so easy to do, in fact, it is hard not to do. I have done it myself a million times. I want to take their faces gently in my hands, look into their eyes and say, “Breathe.” Then I want to turn their faces toward the light and say, “Look. Remember? Seek your otherness for a while. Hang out there for a bit.”

If, in my entire lifetime, I write one poem that provides comfort, encouragement or challenge to one person, if something I write helps one soul vanish from a difficult place, then I will have realized, at least in part, what I was to do with this one wild and precious life of mine.

Meanwhile, I will get back on Facebook. That is where I share my poetry and that is where I see the beautiful faces and stories of my friends and family, your children and your grandchildren, who are your joy and therefore, my joy. That is where I find and can follow other people’s creative endeavors, whether it be writing, painting, photography, jewelry making or any of the other ways people express their creative selves. It really is generally a good place for an introvert to visit. If you would like to read my poems, comment on them or share them, that would be great. After all, I have to make sure that God is keeping up Her end of our deal! But most importantly, remember that the world is bigger and more beautiful than any of us can imagine. Read Mary Oliver. She is amazing. She may just change your world.