Today’s writer is not officially a Unitarian Universalist, not a member of any of our congregations, but we like to claim her as our own through her poetry. Mary Oliver, whose books are published by Beacon Press (an independent publisher affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association), writes the most beautiful things, and they so often fit into the scope of a UU worship service. Last year at General Assembly, she delivered the Ware Lecture, at which I was fortunate to have an excellent seat.

This is my favorite poem of hers, and as it is my birthday today, I’m delighted to share it with you:

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

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?

Source: New and Selected Poems, 1992, Beacon Press, Boston, MA

This poem is also part of the Library of Congress-sponsored “Poetry 180,” a program conceived by former poet lauriate Billy Collins to encourage high school students to enjoy a poem each day that they have no obligation to analyze. Brilliant.