Goodness and Acceptance

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 landscape, 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 calls to you like the wild geese, arsh and exciting– in the finality of things.

Mary Oliver

Cited in Prayers for Healing

The wisdom found in these words of consolation are to be appreciated deeply, and as I have lived in many years of consideration with them…

First, as an affectionate gift of poetry that served to assuage some unknown grief or guilt, then attesting as to their value for my own inner wrestling with self acceptance, I conclude that there is wisdom and there is a compelling caveat to avoid using her words as any justification or rationalization of one’s behavior based on how we interpret Oliver’s idea of “goodness.”

For me, her emphasis on a soft animal acceptance of our mistakes can release any sense of guilt we might harbor; and that trying to be “good” in a cultural, romantic or psychological sense is only filled with striving disappointments that can foster more guilt or remorse.

The compassionate embrace and acceptance of our full, soft humanness is a necessary step in any pursuit of healing and wholeness… However, it cannot be an excuse to avoid the ethical and moral aspects of behavior that asks you to reconcile, redeem, and forgive…

Yes, the world goes on around you… yes, the natural rhythms accept and redeem it all over the eons of time… We are called to accept and then repair our humanness, or find the wisdom from our relationships.

It is crucial that we release our personal quest for meaning in ways that allow us to embrace both the harsh and exciting, while preparing ourselves in ways that are final and graceful in their completion…