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Hallo again to all.

We confess: We are quite heartily tired of reading reactions, statements, rebuttals, and general response to the Windsor Report. Okay, we're flagging early; in the months ahead it will be necessarily in the spotlight. But for now -- nearly a week after it was released -- we'll put our fingers in our ears, just for a moment.

We say it's time for more poetry and fewer reports. Until recently, we didn't know much about Mary Oliver, but we are grateful for having made her textual acquaintance. The autumnal poem below -- which resonates especially with those of us in the northern hemisphere -- whispers something of Advent's Four Last Things. And it usefully redirected our attention from 'What does that sentence mean?' to 'What does our life mean?'

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

—Mary Oliver

See you next week.

Cynthia McFarland cmcf@anglicansonline.org	Brian Reid reid@anglicansonline.org

Last updated: 24 October 2004
URL: http://anglicansonline.org