Beautiful Useless

Carolina Wren (photo by William Majaros)

One of the greatest needs I hear repeated during workshops is "contribution" and "to matter."  I resonate with both of these. Do you?

For myself there are other needs lurking behind these, very important needs to recognize and address.  I might characterize these as "belonging" and "interconnection."  No  matter what I do I belong and am interconnected with the interdependent whole.  It is only my state of mind that sees it otherwise, alas all too often!

So I have taken up the motto, "Beautiful Useless," so that I might remember how I can experience connection to all life no matter external characteristics, or even internal states of mind.

To help me remember this motto, I read Mary Oliver whose poems, such as this one below, speak to our deep interbeing with all, no matter where we may be standing or our stance in life.

I Happened to be Standing

I don’t know where prayers go,

or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep

half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it

crosses the street?

The sunflower? The old black oak

growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world,

along the shore or under the trees,

With my mind filled with things

of little importance, in full

self-attendance. A condition I can’t really

call being alive.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,

or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing

Just outside my door, with my notebook open,

Which is the way I begin every moning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing.

He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,

I don’t why. And yet, why not.

I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe

Or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.

But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be

if it isn’t a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.

Beautiful useless is Mary with her pen in the air. 

Isn’t this who we are, all of us, all the time?

Isn’t this what a prayer is? A cat? A wren?

The triumphant trees?

My fingers are typing out a prayer, as is my breathing, my being, my being – every act a gift and a petition for life to flow easily, fully, in me, which silly me, always does no matter what.

May it be so.

(Alas, another petition, silly me)
At last, hallelujah!

At last, hallelujah!

It is so.

What do you ask for with your very being?

How is your life a prayer?