At various times in my life, this famous and lovely quote from poet Mary Oliver would compel me to interpret it differently based on the stress I might place on different words.
That is, if "one" is stressed, I might wonder whether there should be one thing I focus on in my own life, one gift I should be honing to give to the world.
Or, I might focus on "plan" and wonder whether I have been lax in this aspect of my life----especially since my life has tended to unfold rather mysteriously, with my seeing patterns mostly in reflection rather than in advance.
Recently, I have been focused on its "precious"-ness, its fleeting aspects, especially since I'm now on the downward slope of my fifth decade, an age when many women begin to feel they wish to give of themselves to the greater good (having raised their children and fulfilled various practical societal commitments like helping pay the mortgage)----and I feel an intense desire to discover what I can commit my heart to now.
I have also been focused on my life's "wild" nature, that is, my continuing discovery of what it is to be an "authentic" woman. Raised in a patriarchal culture (as Western civilization is), and especially having grown up in the South among traditional Baptists, who interpret the Bible to mean quite literally that women are meant to be subservient to men (as men are supposed to be subservient to God---an aspect of the equation that is usually forgotten), I have nevertheless always been rebellious and questioning of all things cultural. This hardheaded rebelliousness has served to protect my spirit, but its emphasis has been on the intellect, on reason, on gathering information (and never feeling I have enough!).
And so, when I copied this quote from Jean S. Bolen's CROSSING TO AVALON, I realized that this is where I am now, and I feel privileged to find myself standing with many other women in this place:
We must remember how and when each of us has had an experience of the Goddess, and felt healed and made whole by her. . . Without words they are difficult to retrieve. But when someone else speaks of a similar experience, it can evoke the memory and bring back the feelings, which restores the experience. Only if we speak from personal experience does this happen. This is why we need words for women's mysteries, which, like everything else that is of women, seems to require that one woman at a time birth what she knows. We serve as midwives to each other's consciousness. To speak our own truth the first time feels fraught with danger. . . In the bones of our collective experience as women we know there are risks. . . " [I added the bold for emphasis.]
