Mindful

Sauvie Island, Oregon

Everyday I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for — to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world — to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant — but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these — the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

-Mary Oliver