Posted by I don’t have a ton of time before my work day starts. But wanted to share a poem I reread yesterday and return to often, “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver. It is a poem about many things: prayer, mindfulness, the psychology of being, the joys in doing nothing. Enjoy!
The Summer Day
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? 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?
Buddhist Therapist 
Simone Weil too links attention and prayer in the following passage: “It is the highest part of the attention only which makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established”.
LikeLike