Mary Oliver Icon by Kelly Latimore, https://kellylatimoreicons.com/products/mary-oliver
Special to United Methodist Insight | Aug. 10, 2026
I recommend a new documentary about the poet Mary Oliver – titled Saved by the Beauty of the World – which is a line from one of her poems. She was sexually abused as a child, and her salvation was to go out into the woods behind her family’s home in Ohio and commune with nature. That led into a lifetime practice that became the basis of her literary career.
Mary Oliver died in 2019, her passing hastened no doubt by her long addictions to cigarettes and alcohol. She did not fit the stereotypes of sainthood. After her long-time partner died, she attended an Episcopal church in Provincetown on Cape Cod for a while – but her friends said that the main reason she went was because she had the hots for the woman who was the priest! She wasn’t religious in any formal sense.
But none of that gets in the way of recognizing her as a great spiritual teacher - a contemplative of the first order. Her poetry rhymes with the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of early Christianity, with the mystical imagery of Julian of Norwich and John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart. Ancient and medieval theologians recognized that the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature could be read side by side, revealing the same gospel. Mary Oliver read the Book of Nature every day, wandering the woods and seashores of Cape Cod, and in it she found wisdom and guidance that she shared in her poetry.
From her poem, Yes! No!
… The swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Mary Oliver once said that “attention is the beginning of devotion.” In her little poem, Instructions for Living a Life, she wrote: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” That’s the gospel in three short sentences.
We live in an attention economy, in which devices and messages and memes and videos clamor for ears and eyes constantly. Long before this extreme manifestation of the problem, Mary Oliver understood that Western culture was getting in the way of attending to the natural world, and to our own natures, our inner lives. The whole of her project as a poet was to call us back to attention to the natural world of which we are a part. “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” Indeed.
Those among us with infirmities and limitations that render us useless as cogs in the great Machine of production and consumption still have the supreme ability to be attentive. To watch, to appreciate, to notice. This is what makes us the crowns of creation – that, as Mary Oliver wrote, we have nothing better to do than stare at mockingbirds. Appreciatively listening to mockingbirds is why we are here, it is what we are for, it is the meaning of our lives, it is the culmination of the evolution of consciousness in the universe! Seriously, do we ever have something better to do than listen?
The documentary of her life reveals that for most of her years, Mary Oliver succeeded in not selling her life for money, and as a result, she had hardly any of it. She tried hard to break into the literary world. Her biggest problem was the fact that her writing was so readable, so relatable for most people. I get the New Yorker magazine, and every now and again it will run a poem that makes sense to me, but most of its poetry is so obscure in references and structure that I’m left cold. It’s for insiders. Mary Oliver infuriated the literary establishment by becoming so popular. But once she came into fame, those protestations fell on deaf ears. She was and remains one of the most important American literary figures. She didn’t want to come in out of the rain, she didn’t go crazy for power, for things, and we’re better for it.
Read her poem, "West Wind #2" AKA "Row for Your Life."
This poem could have been an abbot’s advice imparted to a young monk, thirsty for union with the Divine, in a stone hut in the Egyptian desert in the fourth century. The boat isn’t just for rowing. It is for sitting and contemplating, attending to the water’s flow – and only then, at full speed, rowing toward the sound of the water churning, falling in love with the mist in your mouth, falling in love with the steam, taking the plunge of love.
Read her prose poem, The Journey.
She went into the woods and saved the only life she could save, by attending deeply to the lives of birds and fish and foxes. In the quietude of the forest she could begin to hear her own inner voice. Her relationship with nature made possible her relationship with herself.
Mary Oliver made of herself a light, shining it on toads and trees. She drank from the cup we call life, and offered us sips. She cultivated non-attachment by observing the non-attachment of a toad simply sitting there as she walked by. Can we just be here? Like she was. Like the toad was. No agenda, no goal, no end, just here.
Read her poem, The Summer Day, with its oft-quoted last line: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
In not knowing exactly what a prayer is, Mary Oliver was in good company. St Paul wrote: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. Her confession in this poem was all the prayer she ever needed to utter. It is prayer enough to get down on our knees in the grass and let the Spirit sigh through us.
Tell me, what else should she have done, besides strolling through the fields? Jesus told us to consider the lilies and the birds of the air. Consider – not collect, not analyze, not define, not put to any practical use. Consider not generic lilies, but this lily. Consider not generic birds, but this bird.
Now that’s a way to spend your one wild and precious life.
Jim Burklo 2022
The Rev. Jim Burklo
The Rev. Jim Burklo is pastor of United Church of Christ of Simi Valley, Calif. This post is republished with permission from his Substack blog.