You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Hear Carmen sing this Mary Oliver poem on her YouTube Channel @CarmenAcevedoButcherPresence.
Mary Oliver’s gentle, beautiful, persistent, persisting, comforting, inspiring, and no-nonsense, clear-eyed, wild voice has been with me, in poetry and prose, for decades. I’m grateful for her presence in the world, ongoing, beyond death.
Sometimes I think she is the United States Rumi. My friend tells me when she goes home to Iran, that’s when she truly reconnects with Rumi, on the streets, in cars and trucks, in homes, on TV, in gatherings, he and his music and love and wisdom are everywhere. Much the same can be said about Mary Oliver, thankfully.
“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver from Dream Work is a favorite poem for how it invites us to celebrate our interconnectedness with everything, every creature, and every one. It’s renewing in that way. I have lived with it so long that gradually a song came with it. First I read it, then reread it, then recited it, then it became a part of my DNA, I sang a few lines, and then I was singing it, and it was singing me.
First released in 1986 in Mary Oliver’s Dream Work, also a favorite of mine. To understand why, I’ll share with you some alerts in my phone and some notes to my self that are scattered around on my desk on index cards, some folded.
One daily alert that pops up on my SE2 every morning at 6:15 AM reminds me: “I am safe, I am loved, I am part of this human family.” The last part especially is a theme of “Wild Geese”—“announcing your place / in the family of things.”
Another message pops up at 6 AM. If I see it, it’s the first thing I need to see, because no resume has ever been enough for me to assuage my deep-seated childhood trauma. Not that I look to my resume for that anymore, but the reverberations of insecurity are unavoidably foundational for me and deserve my utmost self-compassion and receive it regularly, too. The result of trauma for me is that I often don’t feel I belong anywhere. There are complex reasons for that. Mostly it’s part of my human condition. This message in my phone encourages me with what kind friends often say to me, so I say it to myself since I forget pretty much 24/7: “They are lucky to have you! You’re the best!”
Then on one 3” x 5” unlined-side white notecard in thick permanent black ink, folded tall-ways, I read in large letters: “CALM & CONFIDENT.” Since my default for decades was to apologize for everything, and outgrowing that is an ongoing process, even as verbally and interiorly it happens significantly less and less. My other default setting, for the same reasons, is fear. That’s another reason I benefited from hanging out with the Guru of Calm, Brother Lawrence. I drank in his calmness in that very intimate way of translating him as he translated me. Thank you, Nic.
Then, on another card folded lengthwise, I tell myself: “You’re amazing, Carmen. A ✯! My inner deafness is a kind that hears kind words from family and friends and almost at once forgets to listen. “Love your neighbor as yourself” for me means I have to work daily on inobtrusively reclaiming my safe feeling of quiet baseline amazing, something a healthy childhood might allow a person to take for granted perhaps, and live their life out of that security.
Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to heal my father wound. I’ve been to therapy, lots of therapy, and yes it was hard, and I’ll likely go back again one day. Doesn’t everyone need and benefit from therapy? My massage therapist gets massages. Therapists get therapy. Reminders of our interconnectedness.
I’ve also been fortunate to have years of rolfing. Getting help was painful at first. It did not come easy to me. I only went to rolfing because I could no longer use my arms and hands. In my 30s and 40s they gave me such constant pain that at night I fantasized about taking off my arms, and propping them against the wall beside my bed so I could sleep. My lifelong inner experience of being crippled that I had often coped with (on the surface) successfully, as my therapist once said, “You are a high-functioning depressive,” which made me mad before it made me aware—the truth of it came out. The fear, the pent-up anger, but mostly the sheer fright, came out in my body.
Carpal tunnel made me desperate. Desperation has so often turned out to be a loyal friend. Thank you, Desperation. Today I stretch my body regularly, rolfing healed me from the inside out, from the inner pain to the outer pain, and I was able to work, teach, write books, and more. Thank you, Karen.
I also met and married my best friend, Sean. Over 31 years ago now, and his kindness and deep love have been exciting, fun, sustaining, and healing, orienting me back to my true self. He is the sine qua non.
And I’m fortunate to have long-time friends, a mother who loves me and is always supportive and kind, and my own self-compassion and friendship with my self-Self. I also have a job I love (most of the time!) and colleagues and students who inspire me (all of the time!). Often they also become my friends. How enriching is that. Thankful.
The truth remains that like most people I remain wounded as I’m healed and healing. So those phone alerts and hand-written messages (in permanent ink!) reveal my humanness. I accept them and try to remember to look at the ones in my phone, which pop up every morning. Sometimes I don’t, but I know they’re there. The two messages on index cards I see regularly throughout my day at the computer. They are good reminders. They make me smile. Self-compassion.
That’s why “You do not have to be good” and Mary Oliver so speak to me and nourish me. It’s a song of self-compassion. A song of belonging in nature. Of me being so grateful the snowy egret who soars over me doesn’t put up a sign at the marsh entrance saying, “You are not allowed here. You may not have noticed, and it’s not exactly comfortable for me to have to point it out to you, but in so many ways I’m superior to you, this is my home, and you and yours have trashed it often. Stay out, please.” Thank you, snowy egret. Thank you, wild geese, that you don’t do the same. Hawnking after me to go away. Thank you, all.
This piece is for all of us “in the family of things.”