The Summer Day

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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

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via whiskey river 

image lisa lyle

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"When you call a suicide helpline in Japan you may have to dial that number 30 or 40 times, because the lines are so busy. A lot of people have a lot of problems, but nobody to talk to, nobody to listen, and they say “Please God, someone answer the phone.”

I dream of a war, a war on suicide, but I don’t even know who is the enemy. Who is it, what is it, that’s killing so many of us? One million people in the world every year, 30,000 lives lost in Japan alone. I don’t know what I’m doing, I just know I have to do something.

In Japan nobody dares to talk about the causes of suicide or how to fight them, but manuals teaching you how to kill yourself sell over a million copies. What if 10,000 lives could be saved in Japan? Not by miracles but by ideas, by honesty. Would anybody dare to listen? If death is darkness this is about life, this is about trying to take back life from the jaws of death; this is about choosing hope over despair, even when you’re desperately hanging on by your fingernails.

300,000 Japanese people have killed themselves in the last 10 years. That’s around the population of Iceland. The Japanese suicide rate is twice that of America, three times that of Thailand, nine times higher than Greece, and twelve times higher than the Philippines. Is that something acceptable, or is it time we start to fight back?

The suicide rate is high in Japan because killing themselves is maybe always in the back of their minds. When they face a serious problem they have to make some certain choices, and one of the alternate choices that they make is suicide.

One of the features of suicide in Japan is the weakness of people to suggestion. Look at how often Japanese people try to find others to die with, others who share the same despair. So they will search online to find each other, and they make plans to die together. There are lots of Japanese who do this. The feeling behind this behavior is that it seems more reassuring and safe to be with others, even though everybody is going to die. Why are the Japanese so vulnerable to the power of suggestion?
There are no samurai left in Japan today, there are no kamikaze pilots either. All that remains is a feeling that suicide can be beautiful. The suicidal tendency among Japanese authors has been extremely high, and if you just list them, going through the decades there are many who took their lives. And the pattern is totally out of shape with the rest of the world. There is nowhere else where the suicide of novelists is so prevalent.

What makes a suicide hotspot become a famous location for suicide? In the case of Tojimbo cliffs, there was the local author Jun Takami. He wrote a book “From the Edge of Death.” Death is always a bestseller and it made a tourist attraction. For Cape Ashizuri, there’s the author Torahiko Tamiya. His novel was also made into movie. It made the Cape a popular spot for suicide."

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'A father and mother kissing their dying little girl goodbye.

The medical personnel are bowing because in less than an hour, two small children in the next room are able to live thanks to the little girl’s kidney and liver.

This is love.'

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via in love i persevere 

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thirst

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Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. 

I walk out to the pond and all the way God  

has given us such beautiful lessons. 

Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but
sulked and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. 

Love for the earth and love for you are having
such a long conversation in my heart. 

Who knows what will finally happen or where
I will be sent, yet already I have given a great
many things away, expecting to be told to pack
nothing, except the prayers which, with this
thirst, I am slowly learning.

–Mary Oliver

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image via in love i persevere




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In Blackwater Woods

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Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

–Mary Oliver

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heavy

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That time

I thought I could not

go any closer to grief

without dying

I went closer,

and I did not die.

Surely God 

had His hand in this,

as well as friends.

Still, I was bent,

and my laughter, 

as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel

(brave even among lions),

"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it-

books, bricks, grief-

it's all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,

put it down."

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard 

the laughter

that comes, now and again,

out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

to admire, admire, admire

the things of this world

that are kind, and maybe

also troubled-

roses in the wind,

the sea geese on the steep waves,

a love

to which there is no reply?

–Mary Oliver

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