The Soft Animal and The Truth Setting Us Free
I haven’t memorized Bible verses since I was in high school, but the virtue of it, I suppose, was to imprint those words in your body. That way, it would just be in you all the time. I think the closest I’ve gotten to memorizing something that important is Mary Oliver’s crown jewel, “Wild Geese.” At this point, Wild Geese may have saturated progressive Christianity to the point where we might be spotted in the crowd at a football game holding up a sign that says “Mary Oliver: Wild Geese” instead of John 3:16.
But in case you have never heard it, here it is:
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains, and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” – Mary Oliver
Perhaps the power of Wild Geese comes from its first line, “You do not have to be good.” Imagine that line in the hands of a rowdy eight-year-old making a scene in the grocery store. “Little Jimmy! Would you be good!” a mother says through clenched teeth. Little Jimmy snaps his frenzied head around and says, “Mary Oliver says I don’t have to!”
While Mary isn’t winning any points with exhausted parents, I do think she is racking them up with folks burnt out and disenfranchised by the never-ending marathon of appearing “good” so we can be loved. After all, didn’t many of us grow up with the knowledge that God gets really angry with people who aren’t good? I mean, God killed every human being in the world with a flood because they were all so stinking bad, and God had to kill his son because it was the only way he could forgive us for all the bad stuff we do.
Being good seems to be what life is all about, it is what we seem to pour all of our daily energy into, and is the source of so much of our guilt. I want to be good today, so I’m going to wake up early enough to go for a run, I’m going to be good and not eat fast food, I’m going to be good and not watch Netflix for four hours, I’m going to be good and go to bed early. Soon, the goal of becoming known as a “good” person, and the constant state of disappointment in ourselves no longer feels like the pathway to freedom, it feels like a curse.
I think that is where the second most powerful thing in Mary’s poem comes in and saves us. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” I don’t know about you, but my heresy radar went off the first time I read that. An animalistic comparison to our bodies evokes something untamed, out of control. It seems to put trust in our instincts which I was raised not to trust. It feels too fleshy. The animal, even if it can be described as “soft” is nothing to be trusted, and everything to be cautious of.
But what is Mary saying here? Now that I’ve had some distance from my overly suspicious self, I think Mary is talking about truth. The soft animal of your body loving what it loves is nothing more than the truest expression of your desire. What is it to love what you love? That is a question of primal discernment, a simple gut-check if you will.
And perhaps this is the last part of my trilogy of messages about paying attention to our desires. Perhaps the best summary of Wild Geese came from Nadia Bolz-Weber, not speaking about the poem at all, but who said, “Being good has never set me free the way truth has.”
Heinrich Hofmann, "Christ and the Rich Young Ruler", 1889
In the Gospel of Matthew, we have this famous story of Jesus talking with a rich young man, who asks Jesus a question, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And Jesus replies with a fascinating question, “Why do you ask me about what is good?” His reply comes across as, “Oh, come on guy, what is it you want to hear? You want me to go over the commandments with you? Because it seems like you want me to run down a checklist with you so you can just tell me, “Yep! I did all those things! I’m good now, right? Heaven? I’m in?”
So Jesus obliges and runs down the commandments and sure enough, the rich young man says, “I have kept all these, but wait…did I miss anything?” And here Jesus doesn’t give the man another thing to be good at, he offers him the most difficult thing he can handle, the truth. “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor…then come, follow me.” And we know what happens next right? “When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
Jesus points out the ways we’ve substituted rules to appear “good” while ignoring the heart of it all…that we can be afraid of the truth. It is the truth that will set us free, free from the bondage of checking off boxes, and free to love what we love apart from all the silly ways we try to be loved. In the rich young man's case, amassing wealth and things. Here again, I don’t think Jesus is shaming this man’s desire for material possessions, but asking him to consider what that longing is trying to teach him. And whatever the lesson is, it’s too much for the man to deal with. Maybe it is his deep longing to be seen and appreciated. If that is his desire, then Jesus is trying to tell him, “that beautiful desire will be temporarily fulfilled when you buy something new, but the new possession will never meet the need.
That is the tricky thing about truth-telling, it can make us uncomfortable. Yes, letting the soft animal love what it loves sounds entirely like a joyous thing, but I imagine getting to the thing that our bodies, hearts, and minds truly love will require us to sort through all the false attempts we’ve made to satiate our longing.
Recently, I asked my Instagram and Twitter followers a question, “Is there something the Church can provide you that you cannot find being done better elsewhere?” I received a handful of responses. One person said, “communal silence,” another said, “shared hope.” Someone said, “absolutely nothing comes to mind.”
Something that I think the Church, specifically Quaker Meetings can provide people is a goal of discerning truth and direction as a community. Here I am reminded of a Quaker phrase, “the nursery of Truth.” The phrase originated in 1661 from Friend George Rofe, as he described the island of Barbados, which became a stopping point for Friends traveling from Britain to the colonies. At one point the number of Quakers in Barbados grew to 10,000. Friends would gather and train and prepare to be ministers to the Truth in the colonies. Thus, in describing the role Barbados played in the life of Friends, Friend George called it the “nursery of Truth.”
Friends at this time were being persecuted for speaking this Truth in ways that disturbed others. Rather than this persecution leading to despair, it became a measuring stick, of sorts, for how Friends communities were fairing. In fact, some of the first queries ever published by London Yearly Meeting was, “How does Truth prosper among you?” The word “you” used in this query was a plural “you.” The query might sound more familiar if we read it as, “How does Truth prosper among y’all?” Friends in London likely assumed some Friends may not know how to answer that question, and so a second one soon followed, “How many Friends have suffered for Truth in the past year?”
Yes, it seems that the Truth that lies at the heart of the soft animal, loving what it loves, ends up exposing our personal false attempts, but also societal false attempts at honoring that Truth. Early Friends had an unrelenting commitment to the Truth, which was fostered and discerned in so-called “nurseries” before going out and speaking and acting on it.
We need these nurseries because the reality is, speaking Truth to power, or speaking our personal truths, will almost always be met with internal and external resistance. We will need communities like ours to be nurseries for our hearts and minds. Places to tend to the Truth within us, and a place to train and sustain our efforts toward Truth-telling. Places to celebrate what the soft animals of our bodies love.
Being in this type of community excites me. I imagine this is something we have to offer our neighbors.
Here are some queries:
How does Truth prosper among us? Among you?
How many Friends have suffered for Truth in the past year? If we know these Friends, in what ways are we supporting them?
When was a time when you experienced the Truth setting you free? What did it feel like to be free? How long did it take you to get to this place?