Radiant Suggestion
No one has yet made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge. Of this there can be no question – creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. A person trudging through the wilderness of creation who does not know this – who does not swallow this – is lost. He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home.
How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways…the universe is full of radiant suggestion. Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.
– Mary Oliver, from selected essays “Upstream” (2016)
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As some of you may have noticed Mary Oliver is one of my favorite writers and whenever I get a chance I include one of her poems in my talks. Her love for the natural world and her spiritual insights into the common and everyday have endeared her to many. Her poetry and writing are often associated with Cape Cod, the place and environment she knew and loved intimately.
While the poet writes about nature or the artist paints or photographs nature, nature itself speaks without using words. Nature hints at what lies behind (and beyond) it. I think that’s why hiking, sailing, biking or just sitting under a tree or laying at the beach is such a restorative experience. Oliver says “the universe is full of radiant suggestion.” You can talk about it if you want, but there are better ways to approach that which cannot be approached. As summer has arrived in northern New England seek out opportunities to be out-of-doors. You never know when or where the more than ordinary is going to happen.
Be alive in the moment.
Dave