Generative Tension between “God” and “Earth” in Mary Oliver’s Thirst

Love for the earth and love for [God] are having such a long conversation in my heart. —Mary Oliver, “Thirst”

The contemporary American poet Mary Oliver has been long recognized as one of those spiritually minded people who, because of her profound interest in nature, has found it necessary to reject formal religious concepts of God, even equating God unproblematically with the earth. Since her Pulitzer Prize winning book American Primitive in 1983, she has been noted as an “earth saint.” However, her recent book Thirst introduces into her poetry for the first time orthodox Christian themes. Though remaining consistent with her earlier work in proclaiming that “My work is loving the world” and that the earth is “God’s body,” she now also expresses a longing for God’s missing self: “Where, do you suppose, is [God’s] / pale and wonderful mind?” The title poem of Thirst speaks of the book’s central theme as a “long conversation” between “love for the earth and love for [God].” Through sustaining and living out this conversation, she hopes to become more kind, patient, and joyful—in short, to love both God and the earth more fully. Skillfully composed, insightful, humble, and timely, Thirst is an important contribution to contemporary Christian ecological spirituality. Using a two-faceted approach which parallels Francis McAloon’s recent proposal for “reading for transformation,” I suggest (1) that the spiritual meanings to be found in Oliver’s new poems can inform us about the spiritual practices of spiritual-ecological generative tension and (2) that the act of reading these poems slowly, attentively, and prayerfully can in fact be such a practice.