Opening. Doorways.

A couple of poets have been making some adjustments for me, none less than US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, and the beloved Mary Oliver. They each have something to say about prayer, and when they are done, they have shown me again the miracle of our interdependence. 

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more 
that you can’t see, can’t hear . . .

Joy Harjo, The Eagle Poem

There is no thought here of a laundry list of things I want or need. There is no attempt to manipulate the divine into something that the divine might not have considered if it were not for me pleading and begging. This is a different sort of relationship to all things: openness. This openness makes us at once one with the sky, the earth, the sun and moon and so much more that we don’t yet see or hear. Harjo implies this: that if we practice this opening, those unseen and unheard things will also become a part of the fabric that we are.

It doesn’t have to be
The blue iris. It could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver, Praying

The poetic muses work over time among our poets to make sure that if we don’t hear something one way, we might hear it another. Oliver has us praying with whatever is in the path before us today, a blooming flower, a rock, weeds in a vacant lot–JUST PAY ATTENTION! (Okay, she didn’t shout–that was me, shouting at me). Praying isn’t a contest–it is a doorway into thanks, and silence which opens us up to all the other voices that make us who we, the human family, are. 

Opening.  Doorways. To the voices heard and unheard. The discovery of our interdependence, the gift of weaving of our lives into one another is the theme of the month of April, and maybe just a little praying of a new kind. 

~Bob Patrick