Communion

This poem came to me during my morning ritual, when I step outside, greet the sun, offer up my prayers, and connect with my heart's yearning for the day. I tend to do so in bare feet, so I can feel the soil under my toes.

Standing on the earth reminds me of what I learned at the Orphan Wisdom school from my dear teacher Stephen Jenkinson, and what he taught me about dirt. Dirt doesn't just hold seeds and roots, but also everything that has ever died. The new life of a plant is cradled by the dead. In this way, life resurrects, over and over. What a revelation, that death feeds life.

This understanding has blown my heart open, and given me a greater appreciation for those who have gone before me, for the compost that feeds my garden, all those decaying organisms, and the beloved humans whose bodies have lived and died before mine.

While I was contemplating these ancestors I remembered something I learned from my friend Holly. She was speaking about how she relates to the difficult places in her life, areas where she may struggle - and about how treating these places with love leaves something life giving in the field for others who also struggle with the same challenge:

“As I bring love to this place in me, I'm making a deeper pool of love for others who step in the same or similar messes. I'm encouraged to love myself here and to love others who might also be here, now or in the past or future. Loving that place increases everyone's ability to find love in that place.” - Holly Glaser

These two ideas blended together and became this poem.

Communion

"Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands." - Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

This is my body, broken for you.
These words arise as I greet
the morning sun, my bare feet
sinking into the soft earth. All
my dead lie below me, their bones
feeding the soil, feeding the plants
and animals that make their way
to my dinner plate. Today I feel
their strength beneath me, holding
me up. Others have walked before
me. Others have shared my sorrow
and struggles. Others have wept
my tears. “Help me,” I pray,
offering myself to their bodies,
to the soil that grows me, to the sun
that warms my skin. Their bodies
were broken, too. They knew pain
and illness, loss and grief. They knew
the sting of betrayal and the ache
of failed dreams. I feel their broken
open bodies underneath me, the
cracked seeds of their hearts, each
body given to me this day so I may
rise, resurrected, to live.

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With a grateful heart, Karly