By Diane Joy Schmidt

“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?” 

These are the last lines from the poem “The Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver. This is such an important reminder. Mary Oliver died this week at age 83. These few lines could be a battle cry, to fight for a cause. But Mary Oliver was not talking about a noble sacrifice that could shake the world. She had been out on a walk, taking in the world in a field, closely observing a grasshopper. This is how her poem starts:

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 her with enormous and complicated eyes.

     Is it possible that that too can be of great importance? It certainly is, and a lot better way to spend a day than many others I can think of. I had a pretty good day today. I spent the morning writing a story. It takes a lot of discipline that I don’t always have and I did get some good writing done. 

   Then I made lunch, egg-salad sandwiches with plenty of Miracle Whip and pickle relish and chopped celery on soft bread and with some baby spinach leaves for added texture and crunch. 

       In the afternoon two girls fulfilling their Mormon mission activities came over. In two hours we shook out the dust from the rugs on the porch and we filled the bird feeders, and changed the dogs’ water. We dug a few small holes in the heavy clay soil and filled them with vegetable scraps and ash to compost and enrich the dirt. We moved furniture around, vacuumed, and then we made hot butternut squash soup with lots of garlic, maybe too much garlic, so then we added more brown sugar, and we sat down together and ate it.

     While we were eating, I asked the girls, still in their teens, if they had heard about recognizing symptoms of teen sexual abuse. I was so pleased to hear that they had— they said that in fact it was part of their training in case they encountered a child who needed help. 

      Any kind of early abuse does get in the way so much, of noticing the world around you, of even being able to think clearly enough to have a thought like, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I think that’s why that line rings so startlingly clear for us all, at any age, because one way or another life has managed to beat us up quite a bit. 

     When a child or teen is able to recognize early on that they have been sexually abused, and that it was not their fault—that is when healing can begin. When they understand that it was not their fault—that they’d been talked into or forced into sexual activity that they weren’t ready for, that was inappropriate for their age, perhaps by a relative, an authority figure, or a fellow student that they had a crush on—then the effects can be greatly diminished. 

It took me fifty years to recognize that something that had happened to me as a teen was not my fault. If I’d understood this sooner, I would have taken the reins of my life earlier instead of meandering. I would have more easily found that connection to myself and to the natural world that I had lost. I would not have had to spend so many years searching for the spiritual sense of things that was right in front of my eyes.  

      What if parents were able to recognize what their teens’ behaviors are telling them? What if they see that they are depressed, failing in school, drinking or taking drugs, being sexually promiscuous, gaining or losing a lot of weight, cutting themselves, seemingly out of touch with themselves, and, instead of punishing them, parents can help their kids get the help they need, someone to talk to, to help them understand their own behaviors, how they may be flinging their lives away. 

       Maybe then, sooner than so much later, they would heed that call, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Resources: RAINN https://www.rainn.org/articles/warning-signs-teens
National Sexual Assault Hotline. Free. Confidential. 24/7 Call 800-656-HOPE (4673).      

Published Spiritual Perspectives column, Gallup Independent, 1/19/19;
New Mexico Jewish Link, Spring, 2019

Diane Joy Schmidt is a writer and photojournalist in New Mexico who was raised in the traditions of Reform Judaism and is an admirer of all things spiritually resonant. Read more at www.dianejoyschmidt.com

Contact: dianeschmidt22@hotmail.com  505-264-1890