"Messenger" and "Thirst," by Mary Oliver
“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 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 the 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.
+ Mary Oliver
Theological ideas and feelings are woven through Oliver’s poetry and practice, but perhaps her most explicitly theological collection is Thirst, an exploration of prayer, praise, grief, the Eucharist, biblical stories, and much more. Like bookends, “Messenger” and “Thirst” frame the collection, the first and last of its 43 poems.
In “Messenger,” Oliver begins by naming her work: “loving the world… which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.” Astonished by what? You name it: the blue plums, the speckled sand. This astonishment takes the form of “mostly rejoicing,” she says, with both “gratitude” and “shouts of joy.” But what does she mean when she says her aim is “telling them all, over and over, how it is / that we live forever”? A clue may be found in another poem in this collection, “On they Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145),” where she writes:
To what purpose?
Hope of heaven? Not that. But to enter
the other kingdom: grace, and imagination,
and the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,
a dolphin, a wave rising
slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch
the limpid air, to be God’s mind’s
servant, loving with the body’s sweet mouth — its kisses, its
words —
everything.
For Oliver, then, “we live forever” not by escaping the world into some far-off heaven, but precisely by loving the close-by world in this way, entering this “other kingdom” of grace and sympathy — in effect, entering heaven on earth, the joyful Gospel in a nutshell (“…the kingdom of heaven has come near!”). And sure enough, Oliver circles back to similar themes in the book’s final poem:
“Thirst”
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowy learning.
+ Mary Oliver