True Gratitude

If you've read any of Mary Oliver's poetry, I hope you agree with me that she is one truly awesome lady. If you haven't, check out this video of Mary reading three poems, including one of her most famous, Wild Geese.

 

I've loved Wild Geese for a long time and often return to it again and again to hear that first line, "You do not have to be good." So simple, so reassuring. It seems like I can't hear that message enough. 

But when I watched this video, it was the first time I'd heard Tom Dancer's Gift of a Whitebark Pine Cone. My reaction to the poem was very strange. At first, I was just kind of confused and tickled. A poem about eating a pine cone that was found in bear poop? I must be missing something. I quickly searched for the text of the poem online and read it, thinking I might be able to understand the poem better if I could see the words. I read it once and then read it again before it hit me: this is a poem about supreme gratitude. 

Only a few times in my life has a situation or experience struck me in such a deeply intense manner that I cry and laugh hysterically at the same time. It totally freaks my sister out. Luckily nobody was watching me when I had my moment of hysteria with this poem. Sometimes there can be no explanation for why a piece of art strikes us in exactly the way it does. This poem just brings me to my knees. It is so sincere.

Here is the text for those of you who like to see poems, as well as hear them.

Tom Dancer's Gift of a Whitebark Pine Cone

You never know

what opportunity

is going to travel to you,

 or through you.

Once a friend gave me

 a small pine cone--

one of a few

he found in the scat

of a grizzly

in Utah maybe,

or Wyoming.

I took it home

and did what I supposed

he was sure I would do--

I ate it,

thinking

how it had traveled

through that rough

and holy body.

It was crisp and sweet.

It was almost a prayer

without words.

My gratitude

to you, Tom Dancer,

for this gift of the world

I adore so much

and want to belong to.

And thank you too, great bear.

 So to recap: Mary Oliver's friend found a pine cone in bear poop and mailed it to her, suspecting, correctly, that she would eat it -- and enjoy it. Here is a woman who literally ate shit then wrote a poem, almost a thank-you note! And that's just it: she saw this experience as a gift. She called that pine cone “a prayer without words” for crying out loud! This is indeed a rare soul. Probably most of us would not have the intestinal fortitude to attempt something like this. Metaphor is a big part of poetry, but I don't think Mary Oliver was writing metaphorically here. In my mind there is no doubt that she really ate that pine cone! This lady is not kidding around. But that of course, is not the point.

The point, at least to me, is that at one time or another we will all be at the receiving end of a pile of shit. We will all have some person or some situation that is giving us a hard time. We will all suffer. And during those times, it will be tempting to blame whomever we feel has delivered that shit to our doorstep. We will be tempted to blame our friends, our families, God, reality TV, Republicans, you get the idea. But this poem offers the notion of accepting shitty situations with gratitude, not blame. Mary Oliver suggests to us so innocently any experience is based on how we perceive it, what our attitude is. Instead of seeing bear shit, we can choose a neutral attitude and see a whitebark pine cone that journeyed through a bear's "rough and holy body."

You never know

what opportunity

is going to travel to you,

 or through you.

Mary Oliver recognized her friend, Tom Dancer, as the gift-giver who brought her the pine cone. But she also recognized the bear for his contribution. The bear had participated in making the gift what it was. And then she played her role by eating the pine cone and transforming it further. Here’s my take: we are all just doing our job in this life and sometimes we will have the task of delivering some difficult experience to another person. Sometimes we will be the great bear pooping the pine cone. Sometimes we will be Tom Dancer, mailing the pine cone to our friend. And then maybe sometimes, in those rare moments when we can see clearly, we will be like Mary Oliver, accepting the pine cone, eating it (metaphorically) and making our contribution to the pine cone’s journey.

The final thought: shit happens but we always have a choice how we relate to the shit. We are all just allowing opportunities to travel to us and through us, playing our part in the transformation of everything else.