I first heard the poem "The Summer Day" when read by Kathleen McTigue, the minister of the Unitarian Society of Greater New Haven. Every year she holds a service where she calls on a member from each decade in generations to read and respond to the last question: "What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?" The responses are surprising and insightful. It is fascinating to hear the viewpoints from the 1 to 10 year old to the 90 to 100 year old responders.

When we stop to examine life closely, we are often awed by it's mystery. It also reminds us that there is a beginning and end to this journey. Mary Oliver calls on us to stop and pay close attention. What are we choosing for ourselves? What do you plan on doing with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day
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 big 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 into 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 on doing
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver from "New and Selected Poems"