Poem - Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is a popular contemporary American poet.  Priests and ministers are encouraged to read poetry, as it feeds our souls and stimulates our imagination and creativity.  A friend of mine shared this poem on Facebook yesterday.  It is a good message in a world that can often be bitter, cynical, judgmental, and mean-spirited.  Sometimes, when we feel joy in our hearts, it is crushed and stomped upon.  Yet that should not take away our joy.  

Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

from her book Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches of power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don' be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.