Going There, Love & Mary Oliver

Have you ever felt led to a transcendent sense of self, your relationships and circumstances in life? Ever felt moved in different, unknown directions? That wherever that leads, you might love as you need to love because you would be loved in that way, too? That you'd be more forgiving, compassionate and gentle than formerly inclined, more humble, more selfless than your identity had allowed? Isn't that where we're supposed to be going?

Mary Oliver, in Thirst:

A Pretty Song (edited)

From the complications of loving...

I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?

This isn't a playground, this is

earth, our heaven, for awhile.

Therefore I have given precedence to all my moods

That hold [love] in the center of my world...

And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.

And I say to my heart: rave on.

Love is its own reason.

Mary Oliver, in Red Bird:

Not This, Not That (Edited)

Not this, not that, nor anything...
will alter

my love for you, my friends and my beloved,
or for you, ghosts of Emerson and Whitman,

or for you, oh blue sky of a summer morning,
that makes me roll in a barrel of gratitude
down hills,

or for you, oldest of friends: hope;
or for you, newest of friends: faith:

or for you, ...dearest of surprises, my own life.