“My work is to love the world.” That’s the first line of the poem, “The Messenger,” by Mary Oliver. It speaks to me in a way her other poems do not. It’s as if God is speaking directly to me – love is your vocation. That’s it, right there.
To love the world in all its beauty, glory, and messiness. To love the skunk and the deer, the decay and the growth. To love Putin and Biden as human beings, creations of God. To love as Jesus did, by correcting as well as comforting. To love.
To love includes being “astonished.” It includes witness and rejoicing. To love, “which is gratitude” for all the we are and have been given. To love.
To love, and out of that love to act for the good of all the world.
That is my vocation, our vocation. That is our calling. That is our reason for being.
Go out there and love with all you’ve got.
B
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