I met someone last week for a coffee. That’s part of my new normal, trying to fit at least one human interaction into each day, something other than my peripheral friends at the coffee shop, the daily dog walkers and medical appointments. As I sat waiting for them to make the coffee I noticed Mary Oliver’s book Devotions on the table in front of me. It’s a book that I’ve given to others, a lot - last year I gave it to two friends with birthdays just days apart, both of whom were going through cancer treatment – but I haven’t gifted it to myself, yet. I think of the poems as medicine, bite sized moments of escape and often feel that I should suggest that my oncologist prescribe them to his patients along with the bags of drugs that he gives us.
For me there is a special magic in Mary’s words, perhaps it’s her ability to see the beauty in the everyday and to recognise the power of nature. Her words have been my teachers, reminders to look for beauty in the smallest of seemingly normal things. They make the deep accessible, describing the mysteries of life with words that are always moving. As a little girl I always had my head in a book so it’s unsurprising that I now find myself fangirling a dead poet rather than some handsome movie star.
Mary Oliver talks a lot about paying attention. In her Instructions for Living a Life she tells us to Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell About It – thoughts which are the core of the mantra I say often - that the small things are the big things, the mantra for which this Substack is named. It’s the small things – the smell of coffee and cut grass, the blossom on the trees, a puppy jumping up to say hello – that when added together fill our lives with joy. These are things that we take for granted, but if you were to ask me what really matters in life I would say it’s mostly them. Finding awe isn’t hard, as John Green writes in his book the Anthropocene Reviewed, “It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires.”
Every morning, I try to go for a walk. I don’t go far and I mostly take the same route, passing a beautiful cherry blossom tree and gauging the changing seasons by it. Right now, it’s spring and it’s about to be covered with bubble-gum blossom, in autumn the leaves are golden and in winter it is a skeleton of branches. I see that tree for probably less than two minutes each day, but it reminds me that nature is a force to be reckoned with. One day I mentioned the tree to my next-door neighbour, and she told me she didn’t know it – although I know that she walks past it daily when she takes her children to school. It didn’t have her attention – or rather, perhaps, - other things did.
When you have Stage 4 cancer people say a lot of things to you (more of that another time), but one thing I hear a lot is that people are praying for me, or that they will keep me in their thoughts. My current relationship status with both God and prayer is, as you can imagine, somewhat complicated. Yet, however complicated that relationship is I’m pretty sure that being held by community makes me feel stronger and better able to face whatever is coming my way. Prayer takes many forms, and I am grateful for any and all of it regardless of what it looks like.
“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’ve been doing all day./ Tell me, what else should I have done?” -Mary Oliver wrote in The Summer Day
When I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2021 I updated a group of friends via a WhatsApp Group. At some point people started posting photographs of nature, sharing images of the world around them. I didn’t ask them to do this, it just happened. And it still happens now – sometimes it’s unprompted and at other times it happens when I ask, particularly when I know I have to see a doctor. At the moments, when these images pop into my chat, I’m reminded to pay attention to a world that is bigger than I am, to think carefully about what I choose to give my attention to. That is its own kind of medicine – and perhaps each of those images is also its own kind of prayer. I sometimes wonder if we already know what Mary Oliver’s poems teach us – but we just need to read them from time to time to put things into perspective, to remember.
When you are faced with your own mortality you spend a lot of time wondering about a lot of things. Some nights I wake up and think about I might leave behind. Will there be anything of meaning or significance? What will people say about me? In October Mary Oliver writes “So this is the world. I’m not in it. It is beautiful”. I like to think that she is saying that we don’t need to do anything to have a legacy but what we do need to do is to stop, to sit down, to watch, to listen – and to just be in awe of the world around us. If we do that we will, somehow have played a part in making it a better place and in ensuring that its beauty continues. I find that a comfort. And each morning after one of my sleepless nights I wake up and I go for a walk. I see the cherry blossom tree, the dogwalkers and the people in the coffee shop and I’ll realise that the world goes on and it always will. This is the world. I’m not in it. It is beautiful.
Footnote:
One of my favourite poems that Mary wrote is called Praying which, of course, sums this whole post up perfectly.
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
And yes. I will be gifting myself that book of Devotions.
Thank you Juliet, your words have nudged me into a very thoughtful lunch break. Compared to the usual rush I'm very appreciative.
Take care
I love this poem and yes I love your writing in the way you do