The poet shares a tasty plum with us and plants a healing seed in our imagination that happiness is within our grasp.  As a peripatetic, or walking philosopher, Mary Oliver speaks for the earth and brings us images to sate our hunger for the good life, both wild and sweet.  Deborah invites us to enter the poet’s verses through the contemplative practice of active imagination.

In times of suffering and separation we are drawn to symbolic words that enchant and remind us of the sacred round of nature.   Across time and culture poetic voices have connected us through the archetypes of revelation and beauty.  Today the poet may also remind us of the fragile state of our world and provide a call to action infused with the sustaining power of their art.

Drawing on poets whose spiritual wanderings provided the inspiration for their musings, Deborah integrates Jung’s reflections on nature and art as essential to spiritual wholeness. The works of the haiku poets, Richard Wright and Issa, illustrate the Black American and Japanese experience,  both expressing humor, grief and transcendence.  In a similar way, Mary Oliver and the nuns of East Asia, share a haunting vision shaped by the experience of cultural exile in their own lands.   Join on Zoom with discussion following. Join here.