This Broken Altar

Poet Mary Oliver opens her poem, “Mysteries, Yes,” with these words: 

“Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

   to be understood….” 

This large painting began with a sort of conventional impressionist vision of a scene along a shore, trees draping softly overhead, deep blue and green reflections gently mirroring the vegetation in a stream. But I could not leave it there, not when such mysteries are under threat by those who see the natural world merely as a land wasted if not used for their profit. They seem so certain. They argue vigorously. I do not know how to speak with grace in the face of their arguments. But I can allow a canvas and paints to speak of nature’s indelible beauty in the face of the worst humanity can do, of nature’s intractable and stubborn power to redeem itself, and the hope that it might redeem us too.

Oliver closes her poem with these lines, a sort of a prayer I suppose. 

“Let me keep my distance, always, from those

   who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say

   ‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment,

   and bow their heads.”