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There’s something that happens to me every December; I wonder if it happens to you, too? Things start to wrap up for the year: all of the classes, or sports, or volunteer commitments that usually fill my calendar are on pause for the season. I’ll look at my calendar, and where the regular scheduled programming used to be, there’s a gap. But, instead of sitting back and saying, “Isn’t that nice?” I’ll immediately start to fill it. 

Now I’ve got time for that extra bit of work that’s been sitting on my desk for months.

Finally I’ll get to that home reno project.

Now, in this glorious expanse of free time, I’m gonna go ahead and sign up for kick-boxing.

Jesus said, “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” When Jesus said, “Be alert,” I don’t know that he imagined a world as over-programmed as the one we live in. A world with around the clock text, social media, and calendar notifications, a world where rest is a commodity to be bought and sold rather than freely enjoyed. 

There’s a line at the very end of a Mary Oliver poem where she asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I think of that line a lot at this time of year. I’ve got a running list, and maybe you do, too, of the many things I plan to do. I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly well thought-out list, more the kind of scrawling you do at the last minute when you’re trying to remember what you need to pick up from the grocery store. 

A harried ‘to-do’ list, or indeed a ‘to-buy’ list, is not what Mary Oliver describes in the verses leading up to that famous line. She describes instead a world where, in order to be alert, we must first be idle, a one wild and precious life spent noticing and communing with the natural world. In case you’ve never heard it, I’ll read the poem for us now. This is “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?

Did you catch the creatures named? There was the swan, the black bear, and the grasshopper. And, what is it that these creatures do with their one, wild and precious lives? Did you know that the swan has a constellation named after it? The swan, responsible for moving nutrients through the ecosystem to prevent overcrowding or “hoarding” of resources. Did you know the black bear’s foraging behaviour, tearing apart logs where they find food, helps the decaying process in forests? (I like to think of black bears as the palliative care nurses of the forest kingdom). 

And, the grasshopper, well, the grasshopper has been around since before even dinosaurs roamed the earth. Mary Oliver has focused on the more charming aspects of the lone grasshopper, but grasshoppers are swarming, locust creatures that ravage and destroy. There’s a report from the 1950s of a species of grasshopper that consumed 75 square miles of a farm in Kenya. (We have thoughtco.com’s “10 Fascinating Facts about Grasshoppers” to thank for that interesting tidbit).

Swans. Black bears. Grasshoppers. They declutter; they help things die; they destroy.

When Jesus said to his disciples, “Be alert”, he was preparing to leave them in the midst of a dangerous and uncertain future. The phrase “be alert” is an echo of a story from the Book of Ezra in the Hebrew Bible. The people of God are rebuilding the temple after returning from exile during Babylonian captivity. The king has donated a portion of his treasure to fund the construction and operation of the temple. The people of God are told by those in charge to “be alert” as the gold and silver and various other treasures are transported to the temple. In other words, to watch out for thieves, that no one breaks in and steals what they are storing up for use in the house of the Lord.

There’s something of this story in Jesus’ warning to his disciples, to watch out for anything and anyone who might “steal” the treasures Jesus has stored up for them through his teachings while he has been with them. Treasure that is likened this time not to gold or silver or any earthly measure of fortune, but to the wonders of the natural world. Pay attention to the “sun, the moon, the stars . . . the roaring of the sea and the waves,” he says. Not unlike the swans, black bears and grasshoppers in Mary Oliver’s poem, the natural world is calling Jesus’ disciples to store up treasures of eternal worth, to prepare to let things go, to consider not what long list of little things among the many things on offer they would do with their one, wild and precious life, but what few, big matters of universal importance they would choose to uphold. 

What is it, then, that you need to let go of in this Advent season? What gap will you keep open so the Christ-child can enter in? What things need to be torn apart and helped to decay in order to make room for your one wild and precious life? Amen.