His voice haunts still.
“This is my body.”
Of course the bread—
stone-milled, wisdom-leavened,
sorrow-kneaded, beauty-shaped,
suffering- baked, generously given.
“Here,” it seemed to say.
“Take all of me. I give myself wholly to you.
Consume me. Take me deep into yourself.
Let me become part of you; you of me.”
In fact the whole meal, all of it was his body.
But he was looking around at us.
As if he meant us, his living body,
into whom he had gone like bread.
But was he also looking out the window?
The olive tree offering its fruit, “Take,”
patient as dusk wrapped its scarf around it,
and the wind ruffling leaves, filling our lungs.
The city, the streets that led us,
the houses that cradled us,
the crows that cleaned the streets,
and all the people, the surging, longing mass:
“This is my body.”
The Beloved coming to me, embodied,
that I touch, that feeds me, that becomes me.
Not a fleeting idea, a memory or a dream,
but the flesh of the earth, all of it;
“This is my body,” as he hands me the world,
the feast of earth, the passage of time,
the wild leanings of love, the giving of life,
the quiet embrace of death. Everything
worthy of the same gape-mouthed reverence
as at the table receiving the warm crust from his hand.
Everything I touch now, his voice echoes,
“This is my body.”
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
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