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
In her poem, “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver, beloved by many Jesuit-animated spiritual guides, gives the world an invitation to savor the scenes of summertime. Oliver asks us to look more closely at the creatures composing the scenes of our views and vistas. And then she recognizes that while she does not “know what exactly a prayer is,” she does know “how to pay attention.” In this way, the poet gives instructions for how to engage with an Examen by paying deeper attention to all the daily flora and fauna we encounter through our sensory experience. This kind of embodied knowing is beyond mechanical processes or conceptual knowledge. In this exercise of attention-paying, the Examen can shape choices in a spirit of abundant gratitude for our “one wild and precious life.” Oliver wants us to fully embrace the possibilities and potentialities of a life more fully lived. She wants us to be most fully alive by delighting in all that surrounds us.
With the possibility of a more abundant, fully realized life as our backdrop, I would like to recommend that summer is a welcomed season for this kind of paying attention. I invite members of the Georgetown community to engage in the intentional pause of an Examen and, true to the Spirit of Georgetown, live the value of “Contemplation in Action.” This means that, like Oliver’s poem, we can find prayer in the midst of our awe and wonder at the scenes of daily life. Our paying attention becomes a form of spiritual practice, a prayerful way of being. How to do this, you might be asking? Especially how to do this, you might also be wondering, when awe and wonder do not accurately capture our present moods but instead belie a climate of challenge, difficulty, and anxious uncertainty?
The Ignatian spiritual tradition suggests that we need to balance two kinds of imaginative lenses as we navigate the journey of life. On the one hand, it is necessary to employ a lens of wonder, which sees the beauty and majesty of people and the natural creation. A disposition of noticing the world through this view means savoring the goodness of humanity and the utter grandeur of the natural world. Try this lens out, especially during times of rest and relaxation this summer, and just give yourself over to what happens when you sit with the deep gladness that can arise in paying concentrated attention to everything you encounter.
On the other hand, we also have to also use a lens of critique or skepticism as there is injustice and suffering and depravation in this world. This imagination requires a moral response, some kind of externalization of a better choice to be made, a more loving or healing decision, in light of the despair that we notice in our daily scenes and become aware of through our reading, learning, and social analysis. These realities can animate our conscience and give rise to actions for justice and the common good.
I encourage you to use both views as you journey these days. Before long, the bells will toll for the fall semester and a new season will be upon all of us. For now, let us find some measure of rest in these long days.