and this is living

Since I am living, it serves me well to pay attention

to wake up...to stay aware...

and always stay open to God's presence.



"Be still, and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10

Yes, it is a good thing to be still. Not just good...I find it to be a necessary thing. I lose my way otherwise. Really. I went for my usual early morning walk a few days ago. It broke my heart... this cute little terrier dog started following me. Normally, dogs do that for awhile and then go home. Not this dog... I kept trying to get it to stop following me and return to whence it came, but it kept running ahead of me. After about two miles, it ran off and I didn't see it again. I'm sure it was lost. That just breaks my heart. I'm like that dog when I forget to be still. Chasing this and that like a fool until I am totally lost.

I value stillness and I value the "still small voice" of God that can be found in that stillness. As well as the awareness that comes in slowing down. All of it...the awful sadness of life as well as the awesome joy.

There is so much to experience and learn in being still before God.


Anyway, here's a poem... a nice perspective on what paying attention can be like. Notice how paying attention in the poem gets smaller and smaller and more detailed... from the world to a bear to the movement of a specific gracehopper's jaw... it's great stuff!

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 down 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?


~ Mary Oliver ~