The Miracle of Ordinary

Thoughts from Mary Oliver's "Devotions"

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I’m sitting at one of my favorite local coffee shops, in a nook where I feel delightedly unobtrusive. I can watch the aspens from here and the sun bathe the mountains’ long shoulders. The season’s first snow fell a few days ago and still has not melted. The frosted tips are beautiful, but the golden drops of aspen bejeweling the slopes have dulled in the presence of the snow’s brilliance. But here, my coffeehouse aspens are just now turning—trading summer for fall with seeming reluctance. It’s okay, I remind them. You’ll fill the breeze with soft trilling again next year. Don’t worry.

Fall is the season in which I feel closest to nature. Everything seems more real, more alive. There is a deeper pulse that throbs through the landscape, and I sense that I am being communed with in a more intimate, understanding way.

On a recently rainy day, I picked up the book Devotions — a compilation of poetry by Mary Oliver. I discovered Oliver while at university and have since considered her one of my kindred spirits. She passed away on January 17, 2019, and she’s one of those writers I wish I could have enjoyed a cup of tea with. Maybe one day we will…I like to think so.

Every time I read one of Oliver’s poems, I am struck with the intensity of her observation and the true gift she possessed of championing and delighting in the minute and ordinary. Her poetry drips of worship, of celebration, and a patience with emotion that cherishes every moment as a gift. In many ways, Oliver has taught me how to see…how to recognize God’s imprint in my everyday. I do not know the full scope of Mary Oliver’s spirituality (it’s not the focus here), but her poetry reads almost as liturgy…grounding her reader in the unmovable reality of life, death, grief, and joy…while calling us into the never-ending potential of all the can be imagined, felt, and known through God’s presence and creativity.