As highly “evolved” humans, we have fully embraced the illusion that we can “harness” time and sunlight by the ticking hands of a clock– via Daylight Savings Time. The concept is really beneficial because most of us have places to be and things to do with each allotment of daytime. Clock time keeps us on schedule so we can accomplish the things on our to do lists. My to do list is chock full of meaningless things that don’t make a big difference in this life.
This is Toad’s to do list. “How sweet, uncomplicated, unrealistic, and quite funny,” I remember thinking as I read this book aloud to our kids. Now, I would give anything to fill my days with such reverent and loving actions. I wonder if I slowed my life down to this pace, might I actually be more aware of the Divine presence in each moment.
A Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
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 down 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?
–Mary Oliver
Reader, what is it you plan to do? Thanks be to God for time and space to live this one wild and precious life!