Good morning…
My spiritual director opens our phone conversation with a sacred reading each month. Through her surrendered spirit, God channels life-giving words. This month’s poem woke up my wonder.
******
TRILLIUMS by Mary Oliver
‘Every spring
among
the ambiguities
of childhood
the hillsides grew white
with the wild trilliums.
I believed in the world.
Oh, I wanted
to be easy
in the peopled kingdoms,
to take my place there,
but there was none
that I could find
shaped like me.
So I entered
through the tender buds,
I crossed the cold creek,
my backbone
and my thin white shoulders
unfolding and stretching.
From the time of snow-melt,
when the creek roared
and the mud slid
and the seeds cracked,
I listened to the earth-talk.
the root-wrangle,
the arguments of energy,
the dreams lying
just under the surface,
the rising,
becoming
at the last moment
flaring and luminous –
the patient parable
of every spring and hillside
year after difficult year.’
*******
Amid the ambiguities of childhood, “I believed in the world,” writes Mary. The past tense of the word “believed” makes us realize that something is lost as we move, around age ten, from the magical thinking of a child to the concrete thinking of the rational “adult” mind. Somewhere along life’s way, trusting childlike belief erodes. Year after difficult year, we gradually forget our God-given true nature as we begin to compare and compete, to control, criticize, categorize. These adult tendencies replace our childlike sensations of just being, fully enjoying, excitedly welcoming everything and everyone.
“Oh I wanted…to be easy…in the peopled kingdoms…to take my place there,” Mary reflects, “but there was none that I could find…shaped like me.” None one shaped like me, none one shaped like you, no one shaped like us – until Jesus put on skin and came to walk with us on earth, fully God and fully human.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Do you notice the “adult” question?)
He called a little child and set him before them, and said, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless you repent [that is, change your inner self—your old way of thinking, live changed lives] and become like children [trusting, humble, and forgiving], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:1-4, AMP).
Now as we walk through life’s ups and downs with the living Christ, our inner self is changed, we abandon our old way of thinking, and we live changed lives. We become again like children, trusting, humble, forgiving. With the Son of God as our tour guide, we joyfully enter into the kingdom of heaven on earth. In the flaring luminosity of every spring hillside, our eyes, our ears, and our nose breathe in the restorative rhythms of the Eternal.
“Rising, becoming, in the last moment,” our dormant dreams come to life as we attentively listen to the patient parable of heaven-and-earth-talk. With unfolding and stretching shoulders, we take our trusting place in the whole of God’s creation.
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are (Romans 8:15-16, MSG).
…Sue…
P.S. Thank you Gina Palermo for the wide open white blossoms.
