october afternoons

The weather has been unseasonably warm recently. And oh! how I adore it. Spent an afternoon on the quad with Torunn one afternoon last week. We laid on a quilt and let the leaves fall on us and stared at the sky and talked for awhile.

I have been tired and stressed the past week or two. But you know, sometimes I just stop and am overwhelmed by all the grace too. Sunday afternoon I wandered alone to this great big field a few blocks away from the college. I only had half an hour, but I laid in the grass and let my body breathe in the sunshine and let my hands dig down into the grass and let my thoughts become tangled prayers. The grace is always there - I just have to slow down long enough to find it. How do I always forget this?

I have been obsessing a bit over Mary Oliver, I know - but this poem is too good:

Wild Geese
by 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 your 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.
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