Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day“
Biking on a country road,
eyes full of beauty,
wind in my ears,
I didn’t hear,
didn’t look,
didn’t see the car coming.
As I was about to face the inevitable,
the driver swerved onto the shoulder
and kept going.
I waited for him to stop
and turn around,
but he disappeared into the distance.
I was even spared
his swear words.
Spared.
Saved.
Given life.
Sometimes we are
and sometimes we aren’t.
But all of us,
alive at this moment,
are spared,
saved,
and given life
by God
with this breath
and the next.
And what am I doing
with my “one wild and precious life”?
Laundry,
shopping,
eating ice cream and strawberries,
feeling love
and resentment,
trying to sleep
and giving up one night
and the next,
I’m lying in the backyard
smelling lilacs and
watching the aurora borealis.
This wild and precious life
offers never-ending opportunities
to breathe in
compassion,
forgiveness
and wonder
and breathe out
the same.
Little do we realize that God’s love is maintaining us in existence
with every breath we take.
As we take another, it means that God is choosing us now
and now and now and now.
—Richard Rohr, Meditation Loving the Presence in the Present
An Everyday Pilgrim 