Learning to live a more

centered, creative, and joyful life 

Spiritual Direction, Coaching, Podcast, Blog

shaded trees
By Rod Janz 19 May, 2023
As I venture out this morning, I'm thinking about the Mary Oliver poem, wild Geese, where she says, “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.
light streaming on the sea grass
By Rod Janz 15 May, 2023
I just want to bow 🙇‍♂️ in gratitude (also laugh because there’s a 🙇 bowing emoji)

The poem and the poet that inspired the name of this website...

When I am Among the Trees

By Mary Oliver


When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.


I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.


Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.


And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”*


*Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

New York: Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC,2017.©2017



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