Sunday Best – July 23, 2023
I just met this little visitor outside my window, so clearly there is only one possible way to greet this lovely Sunday morning.
Dear friends,
Here’s to the wild.
Here’s to the precious.
THE SUMMER DAY
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
Sunday Best – July 16, 2023
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
– Leo Tolstoy
The first time I heard live music post-pandemic, I was surprised to find tears welling up in my eyes. And the second time, and the third… at this point it seems to be a lasting condition.
Sometimes it’s hard to take in the bigness of the world, its joys and wonders and sorrows and pains. It can be easier to tiptoe past, to keep a little distance, to box it all up for another day.
Music doesn’t care if we’re glancing awkwardly away from our own lives. The wistful chorus is every lost moment. The soaring melody is every great love. The zinging finale is every jubilant victory.
Thank goodness for these shortcuts,
bringing us home to ourselves.
Sunday Best – July 9, 2023
How lucky we were in Boston that the skies miraculously cleared just before the big July 4 concert! As the cannons of the 1812 Overture, faded, we all turned skyward to greet the fireworks… only to realize that the fog had rolled in fast and low, leaving just a little sliver of sparkly viewing. A lovely evening, yet a little dimmed.
On the other hand, the very night before, I was greeted by not one but two little fawns! A totally unexpected delight.
Dear ones, we never know what’s around the bend. Life’s most anticipated moments might fall a little flat, while any old Tuesday might turn out to be extraordinary.
In this world of unknowing, may our storms be short lived.
May our celebrations be many.
May our surprises be joyful.
May those joys be doubled.
Sunday Best – July 2, 2023
You know that feeling when you speak a fragment of a poem, the same one you’ve mentioned a thousand times before, but this time instead of you being the only one who knows it’s a poem and not a throwaway phrase you are with the friends who know the poem and see why you are referencing it even though it is not the most obvious reason and they can recite the whole thing right there while you are talking which takes the conversation to a whole other place that is simultaneously higher and deeper because they get IT and they get YOU and you are just overwhelmed by how lucky you are to know such people?
May we all keep such fragments.
May we all have such moments.
May we all know such humans.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
Sunday Best – June 25, 2023
Last week, a fan beside me at Fenway – the most wonderful place on earth – brought along an old-fashioned scoring book, which contained records of every baseball game he’d attended for the last decade or so. The kids around him were mesmerized as he recounted every play from a famous old match-up by reading the rune-like symbols – no YouTube clips or ESPN highlight reels required. By the end of the night they’d mastered the secret code and were yelling out the scoring for each play so that it could be properly recorded.
It is wonderful to live in an age when we can recall a recipe or identify a birdsong or settle a trivia bet with the press of a button. But dear friends, what do we want to keep closer, safer?
Knowing the stars and trees and creatures and pathways home need not be left to apps. Our memories and images and poems and music need not depend on strong wifi.
What is so precious that we give it space within?