The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water

By Mary Oliver

But the lilies

are slippery and wild — they are

devoid of meaning, they are

simply doing, from the deepest

spurs of their being,

what they are impelled to do

every summer.

And so, dear sorrow, are you.

Summer in NY is classic films in Bryant Park, block parties in Valley Stream and cycling loops past Harlem Meer and Strawberry Fields.

Summer in CA is Four Mile Trail hikes, Red Wolf pancakes and Jason’s pizzas.

Summer in PK (this week) is 110 temps, 5-hour power cuts, and 4 hours of fragmented sleep… Summer in PK does what it is “impelled to do.”

Father Richard Rohr prays that God would give him one good humiliation each day, so that he can watch his reaction and make sure he is staying grounded. Summer in PK feels like God doing me a solid and answering this prayer even before I’ve prayed it (thanks, God).

This morning, a grey 80-year-old-looking beetle was helplessly trying to climb a wall in my office bathroom, and an hour later, the thing was still wandering aimlessly in the same corner.

“What a pathetic life. Is there even a single purpose for this guy to exist?”

Over breakfast though, Mary Oliver described the life of a rose:

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.

Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.

Or any other foolish question.

I’m afraid of this rose life, afraid to not ask the foolish questions, afraid of not having the ambition.

And yet, summer in PK comes every year, and if we resist — if we don’t watch our reaction — we might not receive what summer is impelled to do.