What Does the Sun Preach About Shadows?

There’s an anecdote about the poet Mary Oliver, that she would crawl on the forest floor to see what the foxes see. 

I’ve struggled a lot lately with writing. I don’t feel like I have much to say, my book’s launch has been daunting and stressful, and there’s not much pith left on my lips. In fact, I’m finding myself a bit stingy with the thoughts that intrigue me and the words that attach find me. I want to write because I feel like I should write, but all of it seems like a farse. Writing feels like a caricature of a genuine vocation. At least, the sort of writing that I am prone to do, the writing that feels fulfilling and weighty like a good meal, a few bites shy of stuffed.

Writers can be a fragile bunch (read: I am fragile enough for us all). And as the old trope goes, comparison is the thief of joy. I am realistic about my capacity, and I am a firm defender of my boundaries. I don’t have much to give, so I’ve been holding back the little that I have seemed to scrounge up. I don’t have the capacity that I typically see touted in Christian, non-fiction spaces. And I certainly don’t have the charisma nor the inspirational content that seems to keep readers coming back for more.

A lot of this comes down to insecurity. I am not, nor do I want to be, a writer-turned-influencer. The thought leaves me with a bitter taste at the back of my throat that no amount of honey and chamomile can wash away. But what I do want to do is this: walk with you among the thorns, thistles, and mud of the forest floor, pointing to elderberries, smelling chocolate mint, foraging for chanterelles, feeling pine needles crunch beneath my feet. I want to see what the foxes see, and I want to show it all to you in blaring detail. I want to walk through the mire and clay of the earth; I want to walk low and slow. I want to see what the sun preaches about shadows, what the moon sings about faithfulness, what the voles say about smallness. I want to sense acutely. I want to turn over every small rock, seeing what God had put there for us.

This isn’t a plea for sympathy or pity. It is, however, an invitation to rouse ourselves and seek what God is churning inside of us, paying attention to all of the troubled waters within our spirit. It is an encouragement to not settle for thin and wanting content about God and man. It’s a call to sit among the water reeds and see what they can teach you.

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, Wild Geese