O'Reilley, Mary Rose
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Mary Rose O'Reilley is an American poet, novelist, and writer of non-fiction.
Life
O'Reilley was born in Pampa, Texas, and educated in Roseville and Saint Paul, Minnesota. She was raised a Catholic and is now a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). She has spent time in Buddhist practice, in particular under Thich Nhat Hanh.[1] She graduated from the College of St. Catherine and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
From 1978 to 2006, she taught English and environmental studies at the College/University of St. Thomas.[2]
O'Reilley lives on an island in Puget Sound.[3]
Awards
- 2005 Walt Whitman Award
- Contemplative Studies Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies
- Bush Artist Grant
- McKnight Award of Distinction
- 2018 Brighthorse Prize for the novel (Bright Morning Stars)
Works
- "The Plain Speech". Orion Magazine. March–April 2009.
- "The Abandoned Farm". Poetry. March 2007.
- Alice Peck, ed. (2008). "Key Lime Pie". Bread, Body, Spirit. SkyLight Paths Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59473-242-3.
Fiction
- Bright Morning Stars. Bright Horse Books. 2018. ISBN 978-1-944467-14-2.
Poetry
- Earth, Mercy. Louisiana State University Press. 2013.
- Half Wild. Louisiana State University Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-8071-3162-6.
Mary Rose O Reilley.
Non-fiction
- O'Reilley, Mary Rose (2000). The Barn at the End of the World. ISBN 978-1-57131-254-9.
- The Garden at Night. Heinemann
- Radical Presence. Heinemann
- The love of impermanent things: a threshold ecology. Milkweed Editions. 2006. ISBN 978-1-57131-283-9.
- The Peaceable Classroom. Boynton/Cook. November 17, 1993. ISBN 978-0-86709-328-5.
Ploughshares
- "Sellers Motivated". Ploughshares. Winter 2007–2008. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016.
- "Improving the Neighborhood". Ploughshares. Winter 2007–2008. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016.
- "Cleaning the Basement". Ploughshares. Winter 2007–2008. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016.
References
- "The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilley | Review | Spirituality & Practice".
- "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 22, 2012. Retrieved June 15, 2009.
- "Mary Rose O'Reilley". Milkweed Editions. October 4, 2016. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
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Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?
But finding a voice-let's be clear-is a political act. It defines a moment of presence, of being awake; and it involves not only self-understanding, but the ability to transmit that selfunderstanding to others...To experience yourself as "voiceless" is a definition of depression, subjugation, and being counted out. .
Finding voice is a socially responsible political act. We don't just do it for ourselves. And helping someone to find voice demands a spiritual partnership with that seeker. It's an exercise of compassion.
If you have a big splash of ecstasy in your life every day you are going to teach students something finer than "buy low/sell high". Maybe you'll teach them, not by what you say but by who you are, to live their lives as a standing affront to the ravaging mercantile mentality.
What if we were to take seriously the possibility that our students have a rich and authoritative inner life and tried to nourish it rather than negate it?
The economy of gift, of art, is fundamentally opposed to the economy of war.
What do you do for ecstasy?
There must be a mirror to show the soul to itself before the soul can begin to gather its courage.
When I speak in Christian terms or Buddhist terms I'm simply selecting for the moment a dialect. Christian words for me represent the comforting vocabulary of the place I came from hometown voices saying more than the language itself can convey about how welcome and safe I am what the expectations are and where to find food. Buddhist words come from another dialect from the people over the mountain. I've become pretty fluent in Buddhist it helps me to see my home country differently but it will never be speech I can feel completely at home in.
Whatever your eye falls on. For it will fall on what you love - will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.
I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's.
My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you.
I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.
Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours.
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"Whatever your eye falls on -- for it will fall on what you love -- will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go." (02/25/2022)
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