Listen,
the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it
into the body first, like small
wild plums. Mary Oliver

The poet shares a tasty plum with us and plants a healing seed in our imagination that happiness is within our grasp. As a peripatetic, or walking philosopher, Oliver speaks for the earth and brings us images to sate our hunger for the good life, both wild and sweet. Deborah invites us to enter the poet’s verses through the contemplative practice of active imagination.

In times of suffering and separation we are drawn to symbolic words that enchant and remind us of the sacred round of nature. Across time and culture poetic voices have connected us through the archetypes of revelation and beauty. Today the poet may also remind us of the fragile state of our world and provide a call to action infused with the sustaining power of their art.

Drawing on ancient and modern poets whose practice of spiritual wandering provides the inspiration for their musings, Deborah will invoke the oral tradition of recitation to bring their words to life. The works of haiku artists, including Issa and Richard Wright, span the Japanese and Black American experience expressing humor, grief and joy. In a similar way Oliver and the nuns of East Asia share a haunting vision shaped by the experience of cultural exile in their own lands.

By Bowman Deborah PHD