Knowing
Despair
“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...”
Mary
Oliver (Wild Geese)
Readers
probably get tired of my obsession with Mary Oliver's poetry. She
speaks to my heart, and this poem is one of my favorites. She writes
of despair as one juncture in the life journey; “Tell me about your
despair, and I will tell you mine.” One crossroad in the broad
avenue of human existence is the point at which all hope is lost. If
you haven't experienced it yet, you will if you live long enough. She
points out that even when we feel hopeless, the rain falls on the
prairies and the mountains and the deep trees; the wild geese fly,
life continues. Despair will pass, but while you're there it seems go
on forever.
The
poem tells us that in those moments of despair, rather than crawling
on our knees in punishment, we should be gentle with ourselves—'let
the soft animal of your body love what it loves.' Years ago when I
was coming out of clinical depression, my own soft animal loved
Kentucky Fried Chicken—at 98 pounds, I could afford to love it. I
knew I was climbing out of the bottom of the well when, each day for
lunch, I took my KFC to the labyrinth at my church and sat in the
center while I ate it. However crazy it sounds, allowing your wild
goose to tell you what it needs is key. That native 'body
intelligence' knows best.
The
instant at which we feel most hopeless can also be a turning point;
one of those germinal moments, like the mountaintop experience, when
we learn what it means to be human. We realize that we are one among
many, part of the family of man, subject to the same vicissitudes of
nature that bless and plague everyone else. We are neither a thing
apart, nor above, but one of this vulnerable, human tribe. Like the
wild geese, we belong to the world. And that's a good thing.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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