Mary Oliver: a bride married to amazement

It must be true that the whole second half of a man’s life is most often made up only of habits accumulated during the first half.

                                                                  Dostoevsky

Death came for Mary Oliver on January 17, 2019.  Simply reading her poem below is a fitting Eulogy for her.  Her poetic words "all my life I was a bride married to amazement" describe her attitude toward life. Her enthusiasm for living is certainly the template for those who would otherwise live their lives through "habits accumulated" in the first half of life.

This link has information about her:

https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/selected-mary-oliver-poems.html

When Death Comes 

      by Mary Oliver

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.

Competition for My Soul

It may have had to do with the way the stars were aligned on January 3, 2019 or possibly it was because "On the Tenth Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave To Me Ten Lords A-Leaping" but whatever the reason it was the Jehovah Witnesses in the morning and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the afternoon (I am unwilling to entertain the thought that my new overalls make me look like a country bumpkin, which would have made me a gullible mark).

There were two couples at the next table in McDonalds and they were leaving as I was leaving. One of the couples engaged me in conversation. The husband called attention to the book I was reading, which was "Demons" by Dostoevsky and he shared that he had read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Tolstoy. Then his wife said, "do you use the computer?" She gave me a card with Matthew 5:3 "Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need" and the card also listed the website jw.org. I took the card and told her, "You are sowing seeds on barren ground." We parted and that ended a brief proselytizing encounter.


In mid afternoon there was a knock at my door. When I opened the door there were two teen-age women from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Outside my door on the wall in the hallway there are various pieces of art including several images of Samuel Beckett with accompanying words that are a homage to him and his oeuvre. They asked me about Beckett and I told them he was an Irish Playwright best known for his play, "Waiting for Godot." Things moved on and I let them know that for the last fifty years I have followed the counsel of a Greek named Socrates who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." As is usual for this kind of conversation we were each talking past each other. They left me a tract and information about services at their church.

There was sweetness and a robotic innocence about the girls. I wondered if some day they would awaken and understand the Onetti-character's words:

I saw the methodical, the jovial, the resolute, the resigned, the incredulous, I saw the sad; I saw all those who will die without knowing themselves(129).

Even though each girl has a long life ahead of her it is likely they will die without knowing themselves.

Whie Liberal Racism

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explores the psychological processes of intuition and instinct, examining how we make split-second decisions and judgments—both good and bad—and how the ability that makes us more likely, for example, to accurately read a dangerous situation or an ill-intentioned person is the same ability that makes us unconsciously racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced, even if we consciously espouse other views. As a whole, the book argues for a heightened appreciation of judgments based on less information rather than more—on expert intuition or instinct rather than the less seasoned judgments of the novice.                                       SuperSummary

                                                                                                      
Several years ago as I was reading Blink I was introduced to the Harvard Implicit Association Tests. I took the test on "race." Intellectually I pride myself for not being racist.  So you can imagine I anticipated the test would validate my pridefully held intellectual position of non-racism. It did not. The test results revealed that I am "moderately racist." I did not linger long in a state of denial; I realized the result was accurate. The experience was not only humbling it set me on a quest to identify White Liberal Racism. 

While I have been exploring the topic of Racism I discovered a new term-Jamais Vu--it means the opposite Deja Vu--it is the familiar seeming strange or unfamiliar.  I have considered myself a Secular Humanist since 1966