Experience The Wild Goose

Aléynu L’shabéy’ah: It is Ours to Praise

Text by Marcia Falk, Tune by Ana Hernandez

It is ours to praise the beauty of the world, even as we discern the torn world. For nothing is whole that is not first rent, and out of the torn, we make whole again. May we live with promise in creation’s lap, redemption budding in our hands.

This is the song that I have listened to over and over again. It has truly helped channel the Wild Goose (Celtic description of the Holy Spirit). I highly recommend purchasing my friend Ana's CD, Eternal Spirit, online and listen to it daily. It can bring you to new places like it did for me walking the Labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral. Ana will be at St Aidan's on August 6 and 7 while I am away on Sabbatical.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

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 landscapes,

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 offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.