From 6:30 to 7:00 am I joined a meditation on-line with Richard Rohr’s Center for Contemplation. It began with a Mary Oliver prose poem that I had not read, Of the Empire. She wrote it in 2008 in response to the question, how will future generations remember us?
It is pretty dark. Actually, really dark.
OF THE EMPIRE
by Mary Oliver
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
There were 6,705 people on the meditation live-stream. I don’t have much luck with this sort of thing. Group meditations. On-line communities. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I was on time. All settled into the windowseat, with coffee, prayer and poetry books and magazines all around, wrapped in a blanket Grammy Angie crocheted us as a wedding present 42 years ago. It was almost dark. I turned on a lamp and the woodstove flickered.
After the leader read that poem he asked us to sit still for the next half hour and think about how to keep our hearts from growing small, hard and mean.
I breathed and imagined my heart softening. It felt like a walnut.
I really don’t want my heart to be hard and small and mean.
I don’t want to lose faith.
A confession: at least once a day I think– or worse– say something– that as Anne Lamott writes— would make Jesus drink gin straight out of the cat dish.
That’s why I’m upping my spiritual workouts. You never regret a workout. A run, bike ride, swim, walk – yoga– even the not so great ones— make me feel better afterwards.
So I breathed with the 6,705 strangers on the Zoom, and imagined my heart becoming more plum and less prune. It’s good to know I’m not alone. That so many people need to remember to do this, too.
The dogs started wrestling. I clambered up to let them out. And in again. And out again. Up and down back and forth- I don’t know what they wanted– flinging the blanket and swearing— Soon it was barely light enough, in a gray way, to see the river. I could hear the waves. I stood on the cold deck, blanket around my shoulders, and gave up on the communal breath. At least my heart was beating and I could feel the muscles of it in my chest. I saw a star, too.
I don’t want to be remembered for not caring for people, or dogs and rivers.
All the world is not a commodity, is it?
Tell me what you love the most.
The session had ended. But I still had the iPad in my hand. It pinged.
An old friend – she is 85—who lives in Mexico in a small town a day’s bus ride from the Arizona border, texted a photo of the sunrise as viewed from the roof of her house. She added a narrow metal spiral staircase years ago, just for this reason.
Oh God. Be careful! What if you fall?
She ignored me and kept sending pictures.
“Hit the sunrise jackpot this morning so I thought I would share.”
“Awesome and the color changes by the minute.”
“I needed this, this morning.”
Me too.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn that is the strongest point in time, Joy Harjo says– remember the steps to the dance that language is– that life is.
