This summer I picked up Mary Oliver’s collection of poems called Devotions at a local book shop. It is her self-selected greatest hits spanning 52 years of writing. I had gifted this collection to others before, but I never actually read it myself and so part of my morning coffee routine for the last few months has included two Mary Oliver poems to start the day.
Oliver is classified as a nature poet. Most of the poems in the collection appear to be observations of what she would come across on her daily walks. Poem titles include, “This Morning,” “Whistling Swans,” “The Pond,” “Do Stones Feel?,” “Blueberries,” “With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice is So Delicate and Humble,” and “The Poet Thinks About the Donkey.”
The poem I read this morning is called “Toad.” I used to catch toads when I was a kid. My neighbor, Pete, and I would catch a couple toads at a time and put them in one of his aquariums that had a leak so it couldn’t be used for fish anymore. Toads were easy to catch. They almost always peed on my hand when I first captured them. We would collect Roly Polys (pill bugs, the ones that look like little, gray armadillos) to feed to the toads. After a few weeks we would get bored and let them go and search for snapping turtles instead.
Last summer we would see toads around our house almost every night. In the heat of the summer, we don’t usually walk the dog until after 9pm and that is when the toads came out. Isaac would walk with Katie and Wrigley multiple nights a week because he liked to chase the toads off the sidewalk and back into the grass. For some reason, we didn’t see as many toads this year.
Oliver’s poem, “Toad” starts like this:
I was walking by. He was sitting there.
It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored
head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him, at the edge
of the path. He didn’t move.
I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The
pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup
we call a life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the
heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.
The poem continues for a few more stanzas. The toad never talks back or hops away. “Toad” is typical of Oliver’s work - simple observations of her surroundings and reflections on the goodness of life.
This past Sunday, I made a spontaneous decision to catch the matinee of the Des Moines symphony. The beauty of living in Des Moines is that I left my house (in the far suburbs) at 2pm and arrived at the Civic Center downtown, parked, bought a ticket at the gate, and was in my seat five minutes before the concert started at 2:30. There was a guest violinist who played a Brahms’ violin concerto during the second half of the performance. She was incredible. When they finished, everyone in the audience instinctively leapt to their feet in applause.
I know nothing about music except that I enjoy listening to it. But I can’t get over the idea that somehow these instruments manipulate waves in the air, all at the same time, in different ways, and it all comes together in my ears. Even more incredible is that Brahms had all of these sounds in his head simultaneously before he wrote the notes down. I played the trumpet for a couple of years in junior high and all I remember is Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). “The heavens and the earth” is the Bible’s way of saying “everything.” God created everything. The Apostles’ Creed simply keeps the Biblical language. The Nicene Creed adds “all things seen and unseen.”
This means God’s imagination created banana slugs and armadillos and all the varied greens and yellows and brown hues on the bumpy back of the common American toad. And sound waves. And galaxies far far away.
As the only creatures created in God’s image, the first thing we see God doing in the Bible is creating. Central to our ability as humans to image God then is our ability to create. (Tolkien would say we are sub-creators because we don’t make things out of nothing like God does)
I take this to mean that the imagination of Brahms, the hard-earned skill of the symphony, the nimble fingers of the virtuoso soloist, the craftsmanship of the luthiers (instrument makers), the architect who designed the Civic Center and the collective captivity of the audience all combined to create two hours of what can simply be described as “beauty.” And that beauty, somehow reflects the goodness and creativity of the God we worship and the God who loves us. Beauty creates joy. Joy, both in the musicians who clearly were delighted in what they were creating and, in the audience experiencing it; we were dazzled.
Isaac finds this same joy chasing toads off the sidewalks on hot summer nights. I’m not sure how dogs experience joy, but Wrigley gets so excited that he occasionally picks the toads up with his gentle, retriever mouth. I’m never sure what he intends to do but he quickly drops them (if you’ve ever met him, attributing “intention” to Wrigley might be being too generous).
I saw the same joy in Freddie Freeman when he squared up a fastball on Friday night to hit a walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning in Game 1 of the World Series. And on Monday night when Jackson perfectly placed a soccer ball over the goalie’s head into the upper corner of the goal from about 20 meters out.
I realize that we humans often use our creative capacity to make things that destroy life instead of using it to create violin concertos or the perfect bat path that looks so smooth on 6’5” lefty Freddie Freeman. Human creativity is as depraved as it is beautiful. Lord, have mercy.
This is why the rest of the Creed is about God’s commitment to redeeming creation.
But we have to begin with creation. Only that which is created can be redeemed. God created the heavens and the earth. So much of that creation, both seen and unseen, is filled with pain. This is all the more reason that those of us who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good must be committed to offering our creative purposes to the world.
The Bible ends with John seeing a new creation - a new heavens and earth (Revelation 21:1) where “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.” But we are not there yet. As followers of Jesus, we are already “new creations” and have the privilege and responsibility of giving the world glimpses of what is to come.
Creation implies purpose. A Brahms concerto isn’t just an accident. Neither are the webbed feet of toads or a perfectly placed ball from the corner of the soccer pitch. Or a short story by Claire Keegan. Or the carne asada burrito bowl from the restaurant, Flame, in Johnston, Iowa.
All that is beautiful reflects the Creator. All that is broken reflects the need for a Redeemer. The good news is that in Jesus Christ, our God is both.
Oliver’s Devotions includes the poem, “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness.”
I think it is a poem about Fall. It’s October 30th today and the days are getting darker. It is also October 30th of an election year. I’m guessing many of you feel like the days are growing in darkness and despair as we get closer to another divisive election. The commercials in Iowa are intolerable and we aren’t even a swing state.
Oliver’s poem reflects on how the darkening days, the petals on the ground that are dying off for the winter, are necessary for the “vitality of what will be.” Only Fall and Winter will bring Spring.
I don’t know if the darkening days of American politics will lead to a bright Spring in the future. I don’t know if the current wars in Ukraine or the Middle East or Sudan will get worse or better.
I do know that our Creator is also our Redeemer. And that he faced dark days, even the darkest day, on our behalf and came out the other side.
Jesus says it this way, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
May we, who are found in Him, bear as much creative fruit as we can.
Oliver’s poem ends with this:
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
This is our task. As those created in the image of the creative God, to go on, cheerfully enough, even in the days of growing darkness.
So let us celebrate toads and Brahms and poems and maybe another Freddie Freeman homerun tonight, all in the sure and certain hope of the promise of a coming Spring.
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