Surprised by Joy: June 2011

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Summer Day

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?

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

My (cousin's) big fat Arkansas wedding!

I have an oddly proportioned family. I feel as though my family is huge, but in some ways it also feels very small. For example, I have 2 first cousins. And one sister. But my dad has over 50 first cousins, so my 2nd cousin circle starts to explode, and from there on grows exponentially larger. AND all of those folks are very close, both geographically and in each others' lives.

All that to say, my cousin got married last weekend. She is almost exactly a year younger than me. In our youth, my grandmother liked to dress us alike, although I had brown hair and blue eyes and she had blonde hair and brown eyes. She's my first cousin to get married, and in a lot of ways the first family wedding we've had. It was lots of fun. But it was HOT. A June wedding at 2pm in Arkansas is not for the faint of heart. :) My great aunt asked me to please get married under a tree. And at the last minute I was put in charge of music. I worked the CD player like a pro. ;)