by Mary Oliver
Penguin Press, New York. 192 pages
The psalmist said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” True. The poet Mary Oliver says, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” This is also true and perhaps the fount of any reverence for God that leads to wisdom. After all, what is this fear of the Lord that the psalmist describes? Isn’t it the primal inner experience of trembling before the majesty of God? Mary Oliver, beloved for her poems, focuses our attention differently here. While careful not to place writing over experience, these essays describe the creative process itself. That process sounds very much like prayer because it is rooted so emphatically in the need to listen carefully and pay attention to the inner and outer world. In fact, for Oliver the natural world is most often the portal to the inner world.
In the title essay, as a young child she dares to go upstream – the wrong direction – which leads to being lost in the world. Yet, though lost to her parents and the police looking for her, she makes clear that being lost is being found in a more profound experience of creation. These essays explore the risks and demands of the artistic vision – what it means to give absolute loyalty to that vision. Again, it sounds a great deal like prayer and allegiance to a holy calling that refuses distractions and resists the lure of fashion. She writes, “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.” Preachers would do well to heed this word.
