Issue #221: The Spiritual Practice I Learned from My Favorite Poets

This Mary Oliver poem is packed with wisdom.

📚 The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri: One of my favorite books I’ve read this year, Khemiri’s doorstopper of a novel follows three Swedish-Tunisian sisters from a New Year’s Eve party in 2000 to a death in 2035. Even when I had no idea what it was about (a curse, among other mysteries, unveils itself), I found myself captivated by the sisters’ daily lives, romantic entanglements, and constant conflicts.

🎥 ‘One to One: John & Yoko’, on HBO: I’m fascinated by the Beatles—the role they played in shaping music, the ways in which each member coped with their unprecedented rise to fame—and will watch pretty much any documentary on them (this one being my favorite). This latest portrait by director Kevin Macdonald (I also loved his 2003 climbing documentary, ‘Touching the Void’), of the early days of John and Yoko’s marriage, includes archival footage of their intimate life as artists and activists. It’s an uncanny look at an early ‘70s love story, that still has resonances today.

🎧 ‘Wiser Than Me,’ Season 4: I adore this podcast in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus interviews older women like Jane Goodall, Isabel Allende, Gloria Steinem, Amy Tan, about aging and life, and she just released a new season this week, beginning with comedian Jane Curtin.

“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.” — Mary Oliver, ‘Mindful’

The monastery looked like something out of “West World.” Nestled against a sandstone and red rock canyon, at the dead end of a 13-mile dirt road that follows the Rio Chama in New Mexico, I could almost feel its hushed reverence before I saw it on a run with my dog, Toast. The surrounding area itself was remote enough that I hadn’t seen another person in days when I tied Toast to the railing outside and put my ear to the church’s ornate wood door. The last thing I expected to hear was the sound of a vacuum, banging against the other side.

I tried the door and a vacuum-toting Benedictine monk ushered me in, but as soon as I had entered the apse, another shooed me out, “Can’t you see we’re cleaning?” I exited quickly, a little stunned and embarrassed, as I collected Toast and headed back down the road, racing the lowering sun to get back to our campsite.

Issue #124: How to Wake Up to Your Life

I hadn’t even left the monastery’s property when I encountered three deer, a doe with her two fawns. They regarded Toast and me, before bounding away in unison. I was nearly knocked over by the sight. It felt holy in the way I had expected the church to be and I stood in awe, then captured a quick video in the final seconds before they disappeared into the sage brush. As I did, a fragment from a Mary Oliver poem entered my mind, Every day I see or hear something that more or less fills me with delight.