This Wild and Precious Life

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean --
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

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 have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

-- Mary Oliver


Oh, the whole family is out for a ride! smiled the man we passed on the trail.

Not quite the whole family. Some of us spent this afternoon of our one wild and precious life eating a Father’s Day brunch. Some of us spent it preparing for the birth of a sweet new baby. Some of us were up at cabins on the lake. Some of us spent it reading or snoozing or gardening or maybe playing Guitar Hero. Some of the family might have gone on a picnic. Hopefully none of us spent it cleaning out the garage. The afternoon was too beautiful for garage-cleaning.

But some of our Saint Anne’s family did, indeed, spend this wild and precious afternoon out for a (not quite so) wild ride.






Some of the more brilliant among us found a way to combine the riding and the snoozing.




Wishing you days filled with falling down into the grass, being idle and blessed. Days filled with grasshoppers with complicated eyes. Filled with gratitude for this one life that is so wild and is so precious.

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