Mary Oliver

Place.

As I’ve pondered this word (today’s blog challenge prompt is ‘The best place’), I’ve thought of many places I love:

walking in Tilden Park (I live across the street from this wild heaven)

on the dance floor on Sunday mornings at 8:30 in Sausalito with 149 other sweaty and passionate 5Rhythms’ dancers

sitting on the floor in a puppy pile with my three grandchildren, 2 great-nieces and 1 great-nephew on Thanksgiving

doing yoga in my sister’s (the one and only Molly Fox) incredibly physical, and joyously lyrical yoga class

listening intently to my clients on our coaching calls as they share the most intimate details of their ‘one wild and precious life‘ (prostrations to Mary Oliver)

sitting in meditation with the most amazing teachers Lynn Barron, Amma and Adyashanti

simply being with Jeff, the man I share my life with.

I am struck by these things:

how crazy fortunate I am to be living the life I am living

and

how integral being in my body is to the ability to ‘be’ in any place and ‘know’ how it feels to be there. My body is my doorway to place, because I experience place through my senses. I drink place in with my eyes. I touch place with my heart. I feel place through the cells of my body.

and

The ‘best place’ to ‘be’ in is in this body, this sensuous female body that feels deepy and loves completely.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It hasn’t always been the best place to be. In fact, for many years I wanted nothing to do with this place. I stayed way up in my head, or at times, was nowhere to be found even in the vicinity my body.

Now, after much ‘work’ and lots of great body practices, I know differently. This female body is divine. Not just mine. All female bodies are divine.

I remember being at and Adyashanti retreat when he was speaking about the divine nature of all of life. As I listened, I had an epiphanic experience (fancy way of saying an ephiphany, because I love the word ep⋅i⋅phan⋅ic). I suddenly knew, in the embodied way, that my female body, and all female bodies, are divine. We bring life into life in a myriad of forms. Our female bodies are gateways to this amazing thing we call life. If we are in our bodies, we feel deeply, we connect with the earth.

As this was satsang, when the time came for people to share experiences or ask questions, I raised my hand, was called upon, strode up to the mic, and said, loudly and clearly, “I just got that this body (pointing to mine) is divine”. I suddenly heard a chorus of female gasps arise around the room. I obviously wasn’t the only one who had missed this message growing up.

So in wondering about place, I now see, and taste and touch and hear and feel, that body needs to be in conscious relationship with place, any place, to know it.

As Mary Oliver writes,

Wild Geese

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.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 11: The best place. A coffee shop? A pub? A retreat center? A cubicle? A nook? A BODY!

Image credit: Place of Healing, by Mara on Flickr

Just a few days ago, last Thursday evening, I was lucky, lucky, lucky…I got to experience Mary Oliver in person in San Rafael. It was my good friend Megan’s birthday and she invited me along with her.

Mary Oliver is an incredible poet, and having the opportunity to hear her read her own words was one of those amazing moments in life. She is simple yet profound in her ability to articulate the experience of being present to the beauty of life. I found her most engaging as she shared poems about her important relationships: the one with her late beloved partner of 40 years, and the other with her dog, Percy. She is a master of speaking from her heart, in writing and in person.

I am currently re-reading one of Mary’s latest books, Thirst. It is a beautiful collection written after the death of her partner, and opens to two new directions in her work: grief and her discovery of faith. This book looks at sorrow as an opening to the awakening of faith. It reflects my own experience of the profound way that grief can move a person into the depths of the heart, which can bring about an opening into a new, very personal, relationship with life. Pick it up and be prepared to be amazed.

Amy Lenzo, of the Beauty Dialogues, was there, too. We were hoping to meet each other in person, but it wasn’t to be. The place was packed, every seat sold in advance. You can read Amy’s account of the evening in her post in the Beauty Dialogues.

“I walk in the world to love it.” ~ Mary Oliver, the fantabulous poet.

I received this quote recently and fell in love all over again with the world I live in.

The next morning, a sunny spring Sunday morning, I decided to take a walk in Tilden Park. It’s right across the street from our house, so I simply have to step outside and I am there. I took my new camera with me, my new/used D200 that I bought from my good friend Jenn Lee’s husband, Bring Ng (an amazing photographer if you are in the market for one). This was my first jaunt into Tilden with my camera and I could feel my excitement.

I hiked up into our favorite path, a loop that goes up towards Inspiration Point, and then back down hill until it reaches the creek and meanders along the water for some distance. As I hiked, I kept hearing this quote from Mary Oliver over and over in my head. “I walk in the world to love it.” As I walked, I could feel myself settle into the surrounding landscape, dropping down into the deep peace that was waiting there for me.

It was early in the morning, about 8:00, so there were still many pockets of cold air, especially in the shadiest spots, while just around the corner the sun would be blazing and a balmy breeze would blow across my face. In those balmy breezes, I could smell the fragrance of each mini-world I came across.

The sun was coming through the landscape, lighting up nooks and crannies I had never noticed before. I could feel a kinship with the world I was immersed in, feeling a kind of deep peaceful love that comes over me when I hike.

As I hiked up to the top of the trail, I came to my favorite spot, a bench that looks out over the tiny valley and out across to Mt. Tamalpais in Marin. My partner Jeff and I love to sit here in silence, enjoying everything that presents itself to us. The bench is dedicated to David and Irene McPhail. I remember to thank them for this place to sit and appreciate the surrounding beauty.

As I approached the bench this time, I noticed once again the plaque on the back. How perfect. On the plaque was the statement, “Lovers of this Place.” I didn’t miss the serendipitous tie-in with the quote from Mary Oliver, “I walk in the world to love it.”

So I sat down in silence and drank in the beauty of everything presenting itself to me in this rich moment. I wondered what it means to be a lover of this place, this world we live in. What does it mean to love the world, to be a lover of this place we call life and earth and community?

What is it to be fully sensuous, to rest in one’s awareness of everything presenting itself to be experienced? How difficult it can sometimes be to not push certain experiences away, while grabbing a hold of other better ones.

To be a lover of this place means to have a loving relationship with all of life, not making demands on the moment if it isn’t what pleases you. It doesn’t mean simply letting the injustices prevail, but rather loving the world open-heartedly so that you allow it to come to you, allow it to unfold before your eyes, ears and heart. It it then that we can be truly responsive and responsible to the world, to each other and to ourselves.

What does it mean to you to be a Lover of this Place?