Spiritual Grounding is the act of slowing down, noticing, and being intentional about noticing your own being. Here is the poem:
Mary Oliver
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.
Why Wild Geese by Mary Oliver Is a Tool for Spiritual Grounding
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver is more than a beloved poem—it’s a lifeline. In moments of disconnection, shame, or spiritual fatigue, its words offer a way back to ourselves. Back to the earth. Back to the quiet, persistent truth that we belong, even when we feel lost or unworthy.
What makes this poem so grounding is its refusal to demand perfection. It doesn’t ask us to strive or perform. Instead, it invites us to feel—to let the soft animal of our body love what it loves. To remember that our place in the world is not earned, but given.
For those navigating grief, burnout, or spiritual questioning, Wild Geese speaks directly to the ache of being human. It reminds us that the world continues: the sun rises, the rain falls, the wild geese call out, “home.” And in that, we are offered a spiritual truth—not of doctrine, but of deep belonging to the natural world and to our own aliveness.
In spiritual care and therapeutic settings, this poem can help soften self-judgment and reconnect us to meaning. It offers a form of grounding that isn’t about control, but about trust. The kind of trust that says, “You do not have to be good.” You just have to begin.
Whether read aloud in a group, kept close in a journal, or returned to in solitude, Wild Geese gently reorients us. It places our feet back on the ground and reminds us that we are not alone. That even in sorrow or silence, the world is calling us back into relationship—with ourselves, with others, and with something greater.
Painting by: Gretchen Wood
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