A poem, today, to remind us that good things can happen. No, not Sheenag Pugh’s ‘Sometimes‘. Although I’m always happy to revisit that, line 6 is a bit close to home at the moment. Instead I offer you a poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver which someone brought to a poetry group I facilitate (on 6th November. A lot of poems reminding us to be hopeful were brought that day!). See what you make of Mary Oliver’s ‘Halleluiah‘.
It feels very Mary O, in style and form—informal, conversational, asking those questions which draw us in and invite us to feel not alone—and also in sentiment. I don’t find ‘Halleluiah’ Pollyanna-ish, because it acknowledges from the beginning that ‘in truth/ it rarely works out’ that we all feel ‘happy and [love] everything’. The hopefulness lies less in how things are than in what we can do: that we can take responsibility for being as happy and loving as we are capable of being at any given point. We ‘trudg[e]… and sometimes/ almost [forget]’, but we can do our best to remember, and keep trudging.
For Oliver, being out in nature is one of the ways to keep on keeping on. There’s also music, poetry, warm fires, having a really good cup of tea with a friend, stroking the cat, a hot bath after a cold walk, not indulging in doomy news consumption… ‘Halleluiah’ also makes me think of a line by James Nayler: ‘Art thou in the Darkness? Mind it not, for if thou dost it will fill thee more, but stand still and act not, and wait in patience till Light arises out of Darkness to lead thee.’* “Mind” here I understand in its arcahic sense of “to take care to remember”—ie dwell, ruminate, get stuck in. Granted, acknowledging without dwelling can be a tricky thing to do. But it helps.
As also may getting older, as Oliver reminds us: we might have got into our groove a bit after, ‘say,… the first sixty years’. How good to have a reminder of something positive about ageing! Maybe we’re all just earning our wings…
*Quaker Faith and Practice 21.65
