It is not how much you know that matters. It is how well and deeply you live that counts.

In her beautiful poem “Answers” Mary Oliver writes about her grandmother who, although, uneducated in a formal sense lived in a way that enabled her to be connected to the earth and to the rhythms of life. Oliver writes,

If I envy anyone it must be
My grandmother in a long ago
Green summer, who hurried
Between kitchen and orchard on small
Uneducated feet, and took easily
All shining fruits into her eager hands.

That summer I hurried too, wakened
To books and music and circling philosophies.
I sat in the kitchen sorting through volumes of answers
That could not solve the mystery of the trees.

My grandmother stood among her kettles and ladles.
Smiling, in faulty grammar,
She praised my fortune and urged my lofty career:
So to please her I studied – but I will remember always
How she poured confusion out, how she cooled and labeled
All the wild sauces of the brimming year.

In our information oriented age, the grandmothers who live not in ideas and books but in real physical places like “kitchen and orchard” and “kettles and laddles,” are often forgotten. They are over-looked in the dazzle of intellectual brilliance that we revere in our pundits and professionals. We look to “books and music and circling philosophies,” for “volumes of answers.” But in the end we discover they are not able to “solve the mystery of the trees.”

As a person who pours out far too many words and relies far too much on ideas, I need to hear the wisdom of Mary Oliver’s grandmother. I need to know that my great thoughts frequently accumulate confusion rather than pouring it out to be “cooled and labeled,” with the sanity of a life well-lived.

It makes me sad how often I miss the wisdom of the grandmothers of the world. We live beside the quiet steady knowing of love that pours out of the silent witness of a faithful life. And we pay no attention because we are so distracted by the busy hum of the experts who prattle in the press and pontificate in public.

I feel sad that so many of the quiet grandmothers of our culture are made to feel that they are less important because they walk on “uneducated feet… Smiling, in faulty grammar.”

There is a wisdom to the body that works cooling and labeling “All the wild sauces of the brimming year.” There is a beauty to a life lived in harmony with the seasons and in deep respect for the rhythms and patterns of life.

I want to honour the hidden wisdom of the one who labours quietly, steadily, and faithfully. I want to join her in being able to take “easily/ All shinning fruits into her eager hands.”

She holds the true richness of life. She penetrates to a depth of reality that is easily missed in the “circling philosophies” to which I am so tempted to give all my attention. I want to join her in the work of her hands, living in tune with the creation that is God’s gift and in which the presence of the Divine is most deeply known.

Wisdom does not reside in knowing more. It lies in the daily faithfulness of simple actions repeated over time. “Chop wood; carry water.” Live the details of your day with attention and patience. Honour the present moment by being present to the necessary tasks of your life.

There are no great enterprises that need to be accomplished. There is only the task at hand. Every action can become the sacrament of the present moment opening into the vast mystery of life that is the source of all wisdom and meaning.