Take a quiet moment to meditate on this poem, “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. It speaks of finding a place where we experience love, community, and connection rather than guilt, shame, and punishment. Our goal at Bethel is to create such a place, where everyone can encounter healing and hope through the love of Christ.
As you sit with this poem, we invite you to identify with the wild geese who are joyously returning home to and with their beloved flock.
Wild Geese
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.
Mary Oliver, Dream Work, 1986
