Night after night
darkness
enters the face
of the lily
which, lightly,
closes its five walls
around itself,
and its purse
of honey,
and its fragrance,
and is content
to stand there
in the garden,
not quite sleeping,
and, maybe,
saying in lily language
some small words
we can’t hear
even when there is no wind
anywhere,
its lips
are so secret,
its tongue
is so hidden –
or, maybe,
it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables
and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon
becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it,
the perfect prayer?
~Mary Oliver “The Lily”
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Matthew 6:28b-29
I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.
They rise and fall
in the edge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,
and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful
as the old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face
of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself
even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of course he wanted to save someone–
most of all himself.
He wasn’t a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas
it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river–
where the vanishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues–
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.
~Mary Oliver “Lilies”
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention… pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.
Literature, painting, music—
the most basic lesson that all art teaches us
is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet,
including our own lives, as a vastly richer,
deeper, more mysterious business
as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot.
In a world that for the most part steers clear
of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left
where we can speak to each other of holy things.
Is it too much to say that Stop, Look, and Listen
is also the most basic lesson
that the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us?
Listen to history is the cry of the ancient prophets of Israel.
Listen to social injustice, says Amos;
to head-in-the-sand religiosity, says Jeremiah;
to international treacheries and power-plays, says Isaiah;
because it is precisely through them
that God speaks his word of judgment and command.
In a letter to a friend Emily Dickinson wrote that
“Consider the lilies of the field”
was the only commandment she never broke.
She could have done a lot worse.
Consider the lilies.
It is the sine qua non of art and religion both.
~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark
I have failed to “consider the lilies” way too many times.
In my daily life, I am considering my own worries and concerns as I walk past beauty and purpose and holiness. My mind turns inward, often blind and deaf to what is outside me.
It is necessary to be reminded every day that I need to pay attention beyond myself, to love my neighbor, to remember what history has to teach us, to search for the sacred in all things.
Stop, Look, Listen, Consider:
all is grace,
all is gift,
all is holiness
brought to life – so stunning, so amazing, so wondrous.
Thank you to David and Lynne Nelson, David Vos of VanderGiessen Nursery, Arlene Van Ry, Tennant Lake Park and Western Washington University for making their lovely lilies available to me to photograph.
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