WATERmeditation June 2026: “Mindful” with Cheryl Nichols
Follow Up to WATERmeditation, Monday, June 8, 2026, 7:30 PM ET
“Mindful”
with Cheryl Nichols
We are grateful to Cheryl Nichols for once more bringing to our meditation something very useful to our attention: how to be mindful. It was a memorable evening of contemplation.
The video and notes can be accessed at: coming soon
Last month, Cynthia Tootle brought us a message from Kwan Yin, “A Time for Compassion.” You can access it at: https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/may-2026-a-time-for-compassion/. Many of us were struck by the horrible bellicose events of our times that leave children dead and many wounded. How to find compassion is a challenge. Cynthia helped us, for which we are grateful.
We began, as usual, with a land acknowledgement. Then Mary E. Hunt introduced Cheryl.
Introduction by Mary E. Hunt
I have introduced Cheryl many times to this group. Tonight I cut to the chase to say that she is a retired educator who is more active than most working people I know. She teaches English to immigrant women. She is a stalwart volunteer on Thursdays at our local food pantry, and a regular at the peaceful witness in front of the immigration court in Prince George’s County where so many of the newly arrived people are taken for judicial proceedings.
Cheryl is close to the Religious of Jesus and Mary, the community of which she was a member for decades. They work, or worked until it was too dangerous for them, in Haiti where Cheryl also volunteered. So Haiti is always on her heart. She is part of the extended Hunt-Neu Family and beloved of many.
Welcome, Cheryl. Welcome Mary Oliver. You and Mary Oliver make a wonderful team.
Remarks by Cheryl Nichols
Cheryl was so kind as to share her remarks followed by the poem “Mindful” by Mary Oliver.
“Swim in the now” – what I heard myself say in the pool doing water aerobic exercises many years ago. In the fall, winter, and spring I took water aerobics classes at a local pool, but in the summer, I would exercise alone in my stepmother’s outdoor pool. “Swim in the now” was a wake-up call to stop my thinking, feel the water movement, and look at the blue sky through the green trees high in the air.
More recently, the mantra has become ‘be attentive to what you’re doing now… don’t rush…’ even if it’s an activity I want to be over and finished. When I discovered Mary Oliver’s poem “Mindful” sometime in this past year, I read it carefully, re-read it, and thought back to that morning in the pool. The greenness and blueness around me was both relaxing and inspiring. And, I realized how being mindful of the natural world around me wasn’t always, or hardly ever, natural for me!
Even though I live in the city, with a shopping center abutting my backyard, I have beautiful trees and shrubs back here that provide both quiet and shade—to the extent they can, and that I pay attention to. I have recently returned to taking more care of the back yard and taking care to “weed in the now” and to relax in the sheltering beauty that it offers me.
So, I offer in turn, Mary Oliver’s poem to us to lead me, to lead us into the summer, and to be mindful of the call to attention to God’s beauty in which we find ourselves every day.
A note on being mindful: I like mindful rather than “mindfulness.” Abstractions end in -ness, but ‘mindful’ is an active adjective that is having me do something, or rather, to become something—to become aware, to listen, to look.
“MINDFUL” by Mary Oliver
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light,
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
From Why I Wake Early: New Poems by Mary Oliver, Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
Communal Contemplation
A period of communal contemplation followed Cheryl’s input. The image used for contemplation is at the end of these notes.
Comments from participants after the contemplation include:
- “Swim in the now” caught several people’s attention. It reminded one person of Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention./ Be astonished./ Tell about it.” -from her poem “Sometimes” (in The Red Bird, Beacon Press, 2008).
- Another person committed to more time in nature. While she enjoys her high-rise building’s view, she also needs the trees and birds.
- The phrase “something that more or less kills me with delight” caught another person’s fancy.
- Cheryl’s photo of the garden scene which included a Buddhist figure (probably Kwan Yin) caught another participant’s attention.
- Cheryl remarked on the power of nature, the green, and how it is more resilient and stronger than we are at times.
Resources suggested by participants include:
- Movie: “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” featuring Sally Fields, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remarkably_Bright_Creatures_(film) Now on Netflix.
- Movie: “The Sheep Detectives,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_Detectives.
- The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have, Mark Nepo, Red Wheel/Weiser, 2000. See especially “To Rest Like a Tree.”
- Documentary: “Judi Dench: My Passion for Trees,” a BBC documentary, 2017.
Photo by Cheryl Nichols, taken in France.
