{"id":620,"date":"2009-10-29T16:50:07","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T00:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/niasomoves.com\/Rachaelsblog\/?p=620"},"modified":"2010-09-09T16:33:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T23:33:43","slug":"wild-geese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wild-geese\/","title":{"rendered":"1: Breathe, Pray, Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

(First in a series about healing pneumonia and asthma.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Last night, my friends Sharon and Ronen came over to visit. \u00a0They brought chicken soup. \u00a0Ronen read this poem.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Geese<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wild Geese<\/strong><\/p>\n

You do not have to be good.
\n You do not have to walk on your knees
\n for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
\n You only have to let the soft animal of your body
\n love what it loves.
\n Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
\n Meanwhile the world goes on.
\n Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
\n are moving across the landscapes,
\n over the prairies and the deep trees,
\n the mountains and the rivers.
\n Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
\n are heading home again.
\n Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
\n the world offers itself to your imagination,
\n calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting \u2013
\n over and over announcing your place
\n in the family of things.<\/p>\n

— Mary Oliver<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
I wept, eyes fully open. \u00a0I wept, fully alive.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n


<\/p>\n

I have pneumonia. \u00a0“Pneumonia” from the Greek, pneuma<\/em>, “soul, spirit, breath.” \u00a0Perhaps akin to Latin, numina<\/em>, “mystery, holy.” \u00a0The strange and beautiful grief of the world has now made a nest in my lungs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

This poem opens the door in my chest into what my body has been feeling.<\/p>\n

See the great-hewn door frame, set in its threshold, wide and high, mounted in mud brick walls. \u00a0Smell the cedar. \u00a0Smell the earth. \u00a0See the rounded double doors, whose tops who remember being green and swaying in the sky. \u00a0See\u00a0the spiral door handles of meteoritic iron. \u00a0Now see the doors open, and look through them — look into the whole night sky and out to the beach of stars.<\/p>\n

Utterly let go of life or death or hope and utterly rest in the arms of the Mystery. \u00a0Let go of seeking, and simply be in the body, simply say Yes, and within that vastness, moving across landscapes, feet on the ground and yet walking amid the stars,\u00a0somehow head home.<\/p>\n

Ronen and I agreed we could never hear the poem too many times.<\/p>\n

I feel loved. \u00a0I am grateful. \u00a0I feel the love of my husband, family and friends, and the strange, wide, yet so intimate\u00a0love of the Mystery.<\/p>\n

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body
\n love what it loves . . .<\/p>\n

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
\n the world offers itself to your imagination,
\n calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting \u2013
\n over and over announcing your place
\n in the family of things.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(First in a series about healing pneumonia and asthma.) Last night, my friends Sharon and Ronen came over to visit. \u00a0They brought chicken soup. \u00a0Ronen read this poem. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17,13,21,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dancing-through-life","category-healing","category-etymology","category-lungs","category-poem-of-the-week"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":140,"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1915,"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/1915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/synergy-pt.net\/niablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}