Minister's Musing

Rev. Mark Ward
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

July 2006

For me, a peak moment of our association’s General Assembly in St. Louis was to hear Mary Oliver read a number of her poems and prose pieces for the 2006 Ware lecture. Many of you know that Mary Oliver is a favorite author of mine. Her words capture the beauty and rhythms of the natural world and how they are woven into the deep questions of life, love and death with which we all struggle. To hear those words shaped in the poet’s own voice gave them a richness and immediacy that will stay with me for a long time.

One of the lessons that Mary Oliver’s poems teach is that in our busy lives, we need to take time to attend to the world around us. Our driven lives lead us to view our days as containers to fill, rather than gifts to savor. Summertime, when days are longer and life for many of us shifts to a lower gear, offers us an opening to savor the world. “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is,” Mary Oliver writes in her poem, The Summer Day, “I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass . . . how to be idle and blessed.” It is a skill that in our frantic busyness we could all bear to cultivate.

In my time away from church this summer when I’m not (like Mary Oliver) strolling in the fields, I will be thinking about directions for our worship life in the coming year. Among other things I am thinking about a sermon series organized around our seven Unitarian Universalist principles. It’s been more than 20 years since they were adopted, and there is growing talk about revisiting them. It’s a good time to reflect on where they came from and what they mean to us.

At its best, though, our worship life is more than just my own noodling around concerns of value and faith; it is a conversation among all of us. This summer during your idle hours, I invite you to reflect on what kinds of subjects you’d like to see addressed in worship and either leave me a note at church or an e-mail at Minister@UUAsheville.org.

And do take time to appreciate the gift that each day gives you. As Mary Oliver puts it, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell, me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”