“Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers…”
Oh Lord, yes!
Including myself!
I wanted to laugh when I read this line from Mary Oliver this morning because I immediately thought of all the times I made declarative statements over the years about something or another… and I turned out to be WRONG.
It happens.
I get super passionate about answering a question thinking I have the right answer… and I don’t.
I get stubborn that I know the right way to get somewhere… and I don’t.
I decide that I know things about my kids in one stage of their life or another that will probably always be true… and it isn’t.
I’m not sure acknowledging this tendency will stop me from succumbing to certainty and absolutism in the future.
After all, I’m just so darn sure I’ve figured it all out sometimes.
But it is a reminder to me that I have been wrong before and I will be wrong again.
It’s a reminder to look around, a reminder to listen, a reminder to leave room.
The next lines in the poem say:
“Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.”
Can I be humble enough to look back at those times of certainty and acknowledge I didn’t actually know that much after all?
Can you?
Every day I learn more about life and human beings and God and spirituality and love. And every day I am challenged to look at things with new eyes and say “maybe I was wrong about that…”
I’m a work-in-progress, but aren’t we all…
Today I’m praying for a bit of astonishment. What about you?
