Let us live like the wild geese.

 Hi Mom,
I really don't believe much needs to be said today. This poem was one I read several times a day when you were sick. I read it to myself in the car before embracing yet another day at school. I saved it in my phone and read it as I walked across the parking lot to your nursing home in Carmichael.

 

The other day I passed Winding Way and Garfield and I smiled at the memory of this poem, knowing I always opened it on my phone at around that time in the drive.

 

This poem reminds me that we are a part of something so much larger than ourselves. We may know suffering. We may at points be weighed down by poor decisions, or even decisions we didn't know would lead us into hardship, but we need not despair. Live in the opportunities of the world. Live free. Wild. Live knowing you have a chance to make things right, to start anew, to take life one step at a time.

 

We are apart of something larger. And we are also always being called home-into rest. into peace. Into a new beginning.

 

As I start this new year I look forward to a new beginning and many more steps into life, love, and relationship.

 

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.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

Love Always and Forever

Your Daughter,

Brittany