American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019) made this question famous. It is the exclamation point of her 1990 poem “The Summer Day.” I celebrate International Women’s Day with her poem.

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?

The precious resource of time

I wonder how many people demonstrate that their life is wild and precious? We live in a world full of social conditioning, national conditioning, and religious conditioning. If you are free to do what you’ve been conditioned to do, are you really free?

Marshall Vian Summers, the Messenger of the New Message from God, shared a prayer in 2010. It became public in 2015, and is now known as “The Messenger’s Prayer.” Two sections particularly grab my attention.

I PRAY

That this time may be valued

As a precious resource

Not to be wasted for anyone or anything

Not to be wasted on relationships

That have no promise or no direction.

I PRAY

That this time may be used

To gain a deeper recognition

Of purpose and direction

For each of us.

I think of “purpose and direction” as that which makes life wild and precious. I think of “purpose and direction” as something I brought to the world. And temptations to waste the precious resource of time lie in wait at every turn. Wealth, beauty, charm, adventure, excitement.

It’s not just because I’m getting older that I think of the precious resource of time. It doesn’t hurt, though. I long to meet the people I came to the world to meet. I long to give the gifts I came to the world to give. Is such a thing even possible? The New Message from God says it is, but that it takes a lot of work. Particularly in the penetration of social conditioning, national conditioning and religious conditioning. Will purpose and direction make me a troublemaker? Maybe, but it’s not something I’m trying to be. I seek to find that which will make my life wild and precious.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.