Looking and Seeing, Listening and Hearing

The past month or so has been very busy in our house. Surely we aren't the only ones, but it feels like there has been little time to sit and think, which is central not only for life itself but for the work I do. When I do finally make time for Sabbath, one of the wise ones I turn to for guidance is Mary Oliver.

I've been reading her poem "Look and See" this morning, from the collection entitled Why I Wake Early. It's a great poem that seems to come from her willingness to take Jesus quite literally and "to consider the birds of the air." Oliver has this way of capturing a moment, moments we probably all have but far too often, to paraphrase another of my favorite poets, we "have the experience, but miss the meaning." The last line of "Look and See"is a prayer of thanksgiving, I think:

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.

The very next poem in that collection is another gem, that begins like this:

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy,
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.

Indeed! Reading these poems reminds me of Proverbs 20:12 - "The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both." Jesus talks a lot like a wisdom teacher or a nature poet when he says things like "let those with eyes, see; and those with ears, hear"--and sometimes the inverse too - that people look but can't seem to see, they listen but can't hear.

Whatever else the Incarnation means, I think it means at least this: we need to pay attention. We need to make time to look, in order to see. We may not write like Mary Oliver but we can practice trying to see through the eyes of a poet and to listen with the ears of a saint. Each day when morning breaks then becomes an oportunity to see and to hear anew and in the process to be re-created in God's own image.