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Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
The concluding question of Mary Oliver’s short poem, “The Summer Day,” prompts another response. Viewing my life as one wild and precious deepens with the lessening of the denial of my terminal illness: one, in the sense of being unique; wild, in the sense of dreams for fresh learning; and precious, in the sense of God’s unconditional love for me.
Many significant teachers, past and present, have helped me to this self-knowledge, in union with their own participation in the Sacred. This new learning engages this summer day and sets it aglow, unlike any other day that I’ll ever have. Even the poem’s title, “The Summer Day” emphasizes the primacy of the present moment. Note Oliver’s use of the adjective, “The,” in place of “a”—It’s not just any old day. Each day bears its own fruit, with its deepening commitment. Despite still much to learn, I no longer dwell upon the length of days allotted me.
So, the challenge to the able-bodied and the chronically ill prickles under the skin: No day is to be wasted for the build-up of the Kingdom of God. Our world depends upon it.
Even in the face of daily shootings and consequent mayhem, Mary Oliver offers spirit-support through her poems, “The Summer Day,” being among them.
Among splotches of wintered grass appearing bleached and care worn appear surges of greening like bunches of giggling preteens at their first dance. It’s begun… Enjoy!
At 7:20 A.M., I awoke with this healing dream:
It is evening. I’m walking outdoors, anxious. My tooth aches and my dentist’s office is closed for the day. Out of the blue, another dentist sees my distress and offers his treatment: laughing gas. Despite its unfamiliarity, I agree. After injecting my body with the tiniest of pinpricks, the tooth pain is gone, and we resume walking.
The dream’s time, evening, suggests my waning energies, all the more depleted by my terminal illness. My toothache, a disorder that pains me, suggests my inability to chew deeply through experiences, to avoid matters that command my attention, even hold anything in place—an irritant that sours my mood and plunges me into self-pity: nothing matters other than the diseased tooth.
The toothache also suggests weeks of being out of sorts, soured by my new symptoms and side effects of a new drug.
The dentist, unknown from reality, suggests “a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity,” or in other words, the Sacred disguised beneath the practitioner who knows my distress and offers specific help, laughing gas. The numerous pinpricks, barely felt, suggest cues toward deeper practice of the Twelve Steps and the rediscovery of the joy of living.
My healing astounds me and together, we walk into the evening, enjoying dusk’s sky-colors through bare branches of trees.
(Sir Humphrey Davy, early nineteenth century English chemist and inventor, colloquialized nitrous oxide into laughing gas, a reaction caused by inhaling it.)
Heart Whisperings 