Reflection

http://www.diomass.org/multimedia/audio/Mary_Oliver_reads_Six_Recognitions

This is a link to a reading of the poem that I discuss in this blog:

Six Recognitions of the Lord by Mary Oliver

“Lord God, mercy in your hands, pour ma a little. And tenderness too. My need is great. Beauty walks so freely and with such gentleness. Impatience puts a halter on my face and I run away over the green fields wanting your voice, your tenderness, but having to do with only the sweet grasses of the fields against my body. When I first found you I was filled with light, now darkness grows and it is filled with crooked things, bitter and weak, each one bearing my name.”

(Line 2 of Six Recognitions of the Lord)

One thing I have recently decided about Literature is that is has many functions. In accordance with scripture it can heal or direct your spirit. Secular literature can teach and guide. It can humor you or excite you. It can culture you. It can take you places you have never been around the world. You can revisit history and meet people long before your own time. In my own life it has been revealed to me that literature can serve as a mirror. A mirror in the sense that by reading a poem, this poem and line in fact, you can experience yourself. When I was reading this poem I saw a glimpse of myself in the words; a part of myself that I have deliberately dealt with very briefly. Now that I have come to college, the light is being shown on it brighter than ever. I struggle with depression. I always have. I have become an expert at covering it up. My life has consisted of busying myself in order to distract myself and others from this fact. It makes me feel weak to admit it, and that thought is wrong I realize. I have never told anyone this until recently. I have never really fully believed it myself until lately. The poem says, “Impatience puts a halter on my face…” My dad has always got on to me for not “practicing patience". It was a very hard lesson for me to learn. “When I first found you I was filled with light, now darkness grows and it is filled with crooked things, bitter and weak, each one bearing my name.” I have never realized how powerful the experience of Literature can be until it helped unveil something in my own life. Had I never read this poem, maybe I would not have ever been confronted with depression in such a personal manner. It is easy for someone to tell you how you are, but it is another for you to say it to yourself. I suppose the first step to dealing with any sort of problem is confronting it.