Mary Oliver #5- "I Happened To Be Standing"

     I really enjoyed reading this Mary Oliver poem. I came across it just by happen stance, as I flipped through the pages and founding myself stopping to read slowly in a section focused on mornings. Morning is definitely my favorite time of day, although I am privy to sleeping in occasionally. But most often, I enjoy waking up before or with the sun to enjoy the slowness and the stillness. The world sometimes feels groggy as I sip coffee on my porch and watch the sun rise, or as I lug my Bible into my lap for a moment of quiet and solitude. I find that I am most attentive to nature in the early day, perhaps because the distractions of the day, the noise, the hustle, and the bustle, have not yet awoken. While they sleep, I can breathe. I hear the birds singing a little louder, I notice the wind rushing through the trees with a bit more purpose. On a hot summer day, the mornings of slightly cooler weather feel like a gift for only those willing to arise and feel it. In the winter, the briskest air waits for me to scoot my chilly toes, wrapped in socks and pajamas, out from the shelter of the covers. I often say my prayers in the morning, as Mary Oliver does in this poem. She wonders if other creates pray, whether a possum prays he won't be hit as he crosses the street, or if cats pray in their afternoon sun nap. I have often felt that animals are in on something with God that we are not, as if they live with such fearlessness because they know where they are headed- to be reunited with their maker. It makes me smile to think of them praying in the same way I would in the morning, for a good day, for full plates and happy hearts, and to know God more. I know God better in the mornings too. He meets me there with new mercies each day, and I feel His stillness more when I am still myself. The end of this Mary Oliver poem describes a bird singing in such a way that he is "drenched in enthusiasm", and I am reminded of the birds in "The Judgement of the Birds", who sing in the face of death. These birds are similar in my mind; they sing in the face of the death of darkness, of night, of what is past. They sing of new morning mercies, a prayer of their own.

A Sunrise at Home- Little Rock, AR