Mary Oliver

I spent the last weekend in September back in Cheraw with Ruthie, my son Ben, and Ben's friend, Sydney. Earlier in the week, another friend had sent me a poem by Mary Oliver, At the River Clarion. It begins:

I don't know who God is exactly.
But I'll tell you this.
I was sitting by the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.
Said the river, I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.

That weekend the four of us were sitting on the lake named Juniper in a cathedral of cypress trees experiencing part of holiness.

This is my third trip to Cheraw, I made the camp reservation to share this place with one or both of my children. Ben was the only one free to come. But Ruthie is like a sister. Sydney is like a daughter. Maybe it was the sacredness

of being in the dual presence of beauty and love. Maybe the beauty alone was enough. All weekend the lake was windy, to the point of being work to navigate home. But once we entered the cypress, the air stilled and the light softened. We paddled in the reverent silence of a Quaker meeting, watchful, expectant, listening.

We did see pitcher plants, we saw the osprey nest, we saw that crazy sign posted in the lake's middle, and we toured the beautifully preserved buildings in town. But it was the presence of what we could not see that marked this trip and will bring us back to the water again.