Making your life art

One of the things I like so much about my job in the summer is that I get to interact with so many kids. They are out of school for the summer and come into the store shopping with their parent or parents. Mary Oliver writes today at A Holy Experience:

And be astonished by oppression and aggression and transgressions and be astonished, be a psalmist, and be admonished to just be ravished, by a world that makes children laugh wonder at the spray of sprinklers and the splatter of water balloons and go ahead and be like a child and say again, again to the rising of the sun, and again, again, to the crashing of waves and be astonished like the children for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Look into the faces on the street corners this week, watch the faces at the grocery store and feel communion, the gratitude for the color of kids’ eyes, the wrinkling of the beautifully wise, the way the melody of us all coming and going rises and falls and disappears and rises again right there in an airport.

Live everyday like you’re terminal. Because you are.
Live everyday like your soul’s eternal. Because it is.

Start to pay attention long enough that your one heart breaks open a bit in unabashed thanks to the One who loves you, till you live loved, till you do what you love, till you don’t stop till others have felt His love.

Pay attention, be astonished, tell About It — about Him — live the eucharist of thankful communion…

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