The Wellness Compass Initiative is our partner community wellness initative that serves schools, counseling centers, nonprofits, universities, and other community wellness organizations. Each week Holly Hughes Stoner and Scott Stoner, who are both licensed marriage and family therapists, co- write a column for Wellness Compass and we are pleased to share it here on our Living Compass site. There is also a Wellness Compass podcast, where Scott and Holly elaborate on the topic of this column each week, at www.wellnesscompass.org/podcast. or in any podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc).
This Precious Summer
In honor of this being our last column of the season — we will be taking the summer off to rest and renew — we would like to share one of our favorite poems with you. We hope this will inspire you as it has us.
If you prefer to listen to this poem read by the author herself, click HERE.
"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver
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?
We find the specificity of Mary Oliver's attention to this grasshopper inspiring. It seems to us an invitation to ask, “what will we pay attention to this summer?”
Specifically, how will we pay attention to the moments when we are working in the garden, the sunsets we will see, the smell of flowers we will breathe in, the taste of fresh produce from our farmers markets, the beauty of starlit skies, a possible round of golf on a warm sunny day, the moments when we get to chase fireflies with children or play with them in the swimming pool, watching children running freely through the sprinkler, a marshmallow toasted over a campfire, or the walks we will enjoy on a summer evening?
The ample pleasures of summer invite us to pay attention, to fall down into the grass, to be idle and blessed, and to stroll through the fields.
If the question Mary Oliver ends her poem with seems too immense, perhaps we can whittle it down to this:
What is it you plan to do with this wild and precious summer?
Best to you during the magical time of summer. May you enjoy its splendors. And we will see you again right after Labor Day.
Warmly, Holly and Scott Stoner
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