We’re All Wild Geese

(even if we don’t know it)

This weekend I’ll be attending the Wild Goose Festival, a collaborative celebration of spirit, justice, music and arts in North Carolina. It’s a little outside my comfort zone but I’m looking forward to it, and may even share some of my poetry.  The kickoff includes a session based on Mary Oliver’s famous poem, “Wild Geese” (see below).  In the spirit of “The Goose”, I’ll share what this poem means to me.  

Wild Geese | Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

This is such a powerful and awe-inspiring poem! I think Mary was teaching us how to fully live…without fear, without regret, with purpose and with love.  To start, we don’t need to earn God’s grace. We don’t need to continually feel sorry or shame for things we’ve done, or haven’t done. Grace is ours for the taking, if we can open our hearts to the unlimited flow of love. Start by loving and forgiving yourself.  

Secondly, “Wild Geese” says our lives can be the wild adventure we imagined as children, but more than likely dismissed or dumbed-down as adults.  We are only on this earth for a small amount of time.  No one is stopping us but ourselves. Life’s agonies and ecstasies, its loves and losses, its beauty and harshness: all have something to teach us, to show us. If we allow it. So be attentive, take time to gaze and actively participate in the grand adventure that is life.    

Ray Kennedy