Sundays with Mary Oliver

Sundays in Lent following the 10 am Service
Feb 21, 28, Mar 7,14 & 21
On Zoom

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

Pandemic got you down? Too much prose in your life? Like poetry, but intimidated by form, rhyme, and meter? Join us for “Sundays with Mary Oliver,” a reflection and practice curriculum for lent.

We will be using a devotional tool created to invite more poetry and mystery into our Lenten Devotions. We will gather on Sundays after coffee hour to work through a discussion of scripture and a selected poem by Mary Oliver each week. We will also reflect on the practices of the past week and what they evoked in us.

There are no wrong answers, only opportunities for deep connection to a new way of thinking and seeing the world. We will be sharing a digital copy of the guidebook or you can sign up HERE to have one mailed to you. You may also want to buy Mary’s book “Devotions” or you can find her poems free online.

Here is a sample:

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

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 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?