You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles in 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 pebble of the rain
are moving across 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.

-- Mary Oliver

Olga then invited us to reflect on our own interpretation of Wild Geese. She talked about when we create shared meaning we are each expanding so more of us can have shared experiences and perspectives.

I'm a left-handed person; this is how I do things.

When we give each other gifts the unintended outcomes are souvenirs from our travels. We start any conversation with where we’ve come from in our collective conversation. Invited to think about what gifts we bring – both the intentional and unintentional – we did 3 rounds of the World Café with the question:

What are the gifts we bestow each other on this journey?