You Do Not Have To Be Good

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.

"You do not have to be good". This is a hard statement for my Catholic guilt ridden self to swallow. Yes I do, I do have to be good, I hear myself scream back. But whose version of "good"? What does "good" mean?

Perhaps I have to redefine good on my own terms. Perhaps if I let myself love what I love, then I will find goodness there.

Sometimes I don't follow all the rules. Sometimes I don't want to do things merely because I am supposed to... I want to do things because they are life-giving for me. I want to do things because they feel like the right things to do. It's hard sometimes to hear your own voice amidst the relentless chatter of the world around us. The world around us with its' constant opinions about what to do and what not to do, who to be and who not to be.

Sometimes I wonder who I would be if left all to myself. What would I care about? What would I do? What would I find myself being present to, moving towards, letting go of?

I do not have to walk on my knees, for a hundred miles through the desert repenting? Are you sure? Because I have made mistakes. Tons of them in fact. I have done stupid things even when a voice within was screaming their stupidity. I have hurt people. I have hurt myself. A lot.

I have said I was sorry. I have tried to make it right. But have I moved on? How do you forgive yourself and be patient with yourself and let yourself make mistakes? How do you be okay with not being perfect?

How do you be okay with being a divorced 27yr old in a world where being divorced means giving up and being single means being insufficient? How do you be okay with being a minister who clearly doesn't have all the right answers and sometimes isn't even a very good role model?

Maybe you focus on the answers you do have. I know that I have inner wisdom. I know that I care for other people, my hearts breaks for them, I feel one with them. I know that the world is beautiful and that I am grateful. I know that I have a place and a purpose. I know that I am trying desperately to live authentically, to cause more healing than harm, to trust more, to expect less.

Sometimes I think we take ourselves too seriously. I am a magnificent creature, we all are. And yet, I am still only a bit of stardust in a universe of stars. The world, life, everything is so much bigger than me. "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on," she says. It's hard to hold all of that at the same time.. hold the fact that I am uniquely and wonderfully made, and yet, that I am also but a drop of water amidst an unending ocean. My life is truly important, and yet, there is so much more than my life.

In the end, maybe we don't have to be good on someone else's terms. Maybe instead we merely have to find our own terms... to learn to listen to the divine within.. to trust the divine within.. to follow the divine within. Maybe then we will find our place within the family of things... maybe then we will hear the heartbeat of the world within our own.