“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them.
Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. “
–Mary Oliver, Upstream
Have you ever before experienced this most glorious of springs after the longest, darkest winter that lasted at least 4 seasons long and is still ongoing for too many.
Those of us fortunate enough to emerge into what is dawning to be a precious new normal do so having been changed profoundly by our confrontation with mortality, for which as much personal work we’ve done, we were not adequately prepared. We have become older, wiser and fiercer. We regret less and appreciate more. But as the busyness of life begins reaching out to grab us in again, too often as if nothing happened, we need our poets, philosophers and mystics now more than ever.
Poet/essayist Mary Oliver wrote the words above just a few years before her passing in 2019, already feeling the press of mortality hard upon her, as do we who are choosing to age consciously, each and every day. If you’d like to commune more deeply with Oliver’s wise words, and those of us of like-mind, please join us in conversation via the auspices of the Sage-ing Book Club’s bi-monthly meeting. Below is more on our July 21 selection as well as upcoming titles for 2021-2022.
–Carol Orsborn
SBC is Sage-ing International‘s live online book club centering on reading and discussing both classics and new literature about subjects important to those of us choosing conscious eldering.
SBC is hosted on Zoom with group size limited to 30 in order to enable the conversation. Participation is free and by advanced signup with love offerings to Sage-ing appreciated. For more information and to register, click HERE
THE SELECTIONS
2021-2022
All book club meetings to be held 3rd Weds of every other month at 4 p.m. eastern.
July 21
Upstream Mary Oliver
“Born of two ‘blessings—the natural world, and the world of writing: literature,’ Mary Oliver’s biographical book of essays partakes of the spirits of a journal, a commonplace book, and a meditation. The natural world pictured here is richly various, though Oliver seems most drawn to waterways. All manner of aquatic life—shark and mackerel, duck and egret—accompany her days, along with spiders, foxes, even a bear. Her keen observations come as narrative (following a fox) or as manual (building a house) or as poems masquerading as description (“I have seen bluefish arc and sled across the water, an acre of them, leaping and sliding back under the water, then leaping again, toothy, terrible, lashed by hunger”). When the world of writing enters, currently unfashionable 19th-century writers emerge—Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, William James—in readings that evade academic textual analyses and share the look-at-what-I-saw tone animating Oliver’s observations of the natural world. The message of her book for its readers is a simple and profound one: open your eyes.”
—Publishers Weekly
Sept 15
Prisms: Reflections on this Journey We Call Life by James Hollis
Nov 17
The Measure of My Days by Florida Scott Maxwell
2022
Jan 19
The Making of an Old Soul by Carol Orsborn
Publication date October, White River Press. Advance copies and ebooks available in September of 2021.
March 16
Active Hope. Joanna Macy
May 18
Walking Each Other Home by Ram Dass
Announcing:
We will be reading The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul by Connie Zweig in 2022.
Stay tuned for exact date.
Feel free to share this providing proper credit to Carol Orsborn
and a link to CarolOrsborn.com.
