The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? *

*emphasis added

When I first arrived in Lusaka, I saw two men walking down the street holding hands. I though to myself that Zambia must be one of the few African countries that is relatively accepting of  homosexuality. It turns out that being gay is actually illegal here and Zambians just like holding hands.

50 Prayers Challenge: #43 – Update

That’s it. We made it! Five days with only a bowl of rice each day and it was brutal. A bowl of rice a day is not near enough to fill one up. You are constantly hungry. Immediately after eating your bowl, the hunger pangs are eased, but you’re still not full. Your stomach gurgles and the irritating discomfort around your midsection makes it impossible to forget your hunger which makes you think about food which makes you think about your hunger and so on.

I’ve never thought as much about food as I have in the past five days.

For me, each day was harder than the last culminating in today, Friday. At points, I had the shakes. My stomach felt emptier than empty. I think the acids in there were trying to consume themselves. The whole day I had to interact and work with people and operate trying my best to disregard the raging hunger inside. I was afraid, at times, that I might flat out faint (I thankfully didn’t).

My friend Evan summed up the experience the best. He said, “It’s hard to believe a billion people live this way …”

Simple disbelief.