This morning I was awakened by the sound of a single voice calling to me from outside my window. With these warmer spring days, we had cracked the window open a wee bit so the sounds of the outside are now more noticeable. My brain had not quite focused on being open to the newness of the day when I heard the single, loud and clear honk of a Canadian goose making its way in the flight pattern that exists over our house. I shook the sleep from my brain and immediately heard the words of Mary Oliver swimming before me:

“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.”

I love these words so. They are such affirmation to me. Their clarity and beauty connects me with the world in such a deep way. And to have heard that call while still lying in my bed seemed pure gift. I felt as if my place in the family of things was being announced to me: Get up! Walk into this day with a kind heart and a sense of purpose. Open yourself to the possibilities that are yet to be imagined, yet to be teased out of the minutiae that can become the weave and warp of the every day. This is your life. Embrace it!

All that from one honk. From that one pure sound I was enlivened by knowing that I am in league with Creation in ways that surprise and inspire. I do not have to be good or shout to the world all the wrongs I have committed. I have the task of loving what I love and it is blessed work. I have the job of telling my despair and listening well to the despair of others. As humans it has always been and always will be. The sun comes up and goes down, the moon rises and shines. And here I am. Here you are. At home in a world that holds it all and invites us to wear our humanity like a fragile, silk cloak.

Tomorrow morning may bring the regular, old boring sound of the alarm clock. Or, if I am blessed, the same sound I heard today may be my wake up call.

Hooooonnnnkkkk!