Allie Papke-Larson: The words we walk with

A few years back I started memorizing poetry. I was reading a lot of it then, and it felt like I needed those words to be with me though out my days, and not just in the mornings when I had time to sit down with a book.

I would take the words of a chosen poem, printed safely and unobtrusively on a piece of paper that traveled in my pocket. The words I memorized formed into lines then into poems as they flowed from my minds eye and into the air. I said the same lines over and over, trying to remember if the poet used the word “and” or “it,” believing she selected those words intentionally and it would be carless of me to commit the wrong word to memory.

After having the first poem tucked safely into the folds of my mind, it felt like I now belonged to the words and they me; like the poet had been waiting for me to memorize them so she could give them to me.  With delight I spoke those words to myself over and over, just so I could feel their sweetness and power in my mouth.  I continued to find poems to memorize, committing each line slowly and meticulously to my mind and heart. After a summer of this I went through a big transition in my life and somehow this new practice of committing to poetry slipped away as easily as it had slipped in. 

The words of all those poems have disappeared. I don’t even remember the titles so I might look them up and call upon them like one might do with old friends. 

A couple weeks ago I was walking in the cool morning air here in Flagstaff, feeling like the world was just happening to me and around me without any ability to participate in a meaningful way, when all of a sudden the words “You do not have to be good…” erupted from the deep folds of my brain where they had unconsciously been stored. “…you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting…”  The poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver was the first poem I memorized, and somehow here it was, being a friend to me again. The words weren’t all there, but most were, and after a minute of using my smart phone to look up the ones that escaped me, I had the gift of them all on my tongue and soaking back into my heart. 

I’m not sure what to do with all this year has brought us, or how these pains will ever heal and I don’t know how God will renew her people or when she will do this. Mary Oliver’s words, which of course because more than words in that moment, more than beautiful images and sentiment, but a conversation between myself and Creator, a bridge between my existence and all the Children of God and all of Creation and of God herself. The whole world, there in a poem, there in my heart. 

I don’t think knowing what to do is going to heal any of our pains. I think, for myself at least, I can walk though these days willing to let my heart be opened by moments of grace and connection, and I can let myself be led. These things take courage for me, and this courage doesn’t seem to come from myself, but from God, and Creation, poets and those around me who are willing to let their hearts be opened, too.  

Wild Geese 
By Mary Oliver 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- 
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things. 

Peace, 

Allie Papke-Larson 

Allie Papke-Larson is Program Coordinator for Lutheran Campus Ministries/Canterbury Episcopal Campus Ministries at Northern Arizona University and Youth Director at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Flagstaff.