Grant Park, where I often walk or run.
As
a follow-up to last week’s post, “Thank You for the Body that Loves Me,” I
present another meditation on our earthiness, another in a series of
reflections from my earlier books that I hope may lift our spirits in this new
year. The series opened with “Peace of Mind” and will continue throughout the
season of Epiphany and, who knows, maybe beyond.
The
late gifted editor Stephanie Egnotovich at Westminster John Knox Press helped
me “birth” a number of books, for which I am grateful. In 1998, she came to me
with an idea. Sitting next to someone on an airplane reading a kind of generic
book on spirituality, she asked him about his selection. As I wrote in my
acknowledgments of what became Communion
of Life, “He explained [to her] that he had no religious background and was
attempting to discover spirituality.”
“Why
don’t you write something like that for spiritual seekers?” she asked me.
Not
knowing this was a common plan for New Age books, I chose a mythology that no
one would take literally, that everything consists of earth, air, water, fire.
And I wrote 12 cycles of meditations on earth, air, water, and fire.
I
was so self-conscious of this adventure that I showed them to no one until
complete, and then only to Stephanie. She loved them, and took them to
marketing at the Press. The marketing department loved them even more, she
said, and though later admitting their limitations with this very different
market, we proceeded with this experiment.
Stephanie
herself paired my meditations with the outstanding art of National Geographic
photographers, so I can honestly say without self-pride that Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium became the most visually beautiful book I’ve ever helped create.
Cycle Three: Day 9 Earth
Tangible
earth,
You touch
yourself through us.
We grasp
your hand,
Stroke your
fur,
Prune your
branches,
Cast your
stones,
Bury your
seed,
Birth your
children.
But it’s not
just us,
It’s you in
us.
You have
developed your sense of touch
Within our
bodies—
Communing
through us
With air,
water, fire,
In pleasure,
buoyancy, and passion;
And
communing through us with yourself
Delightedly,
painfully, compassionately:
A communion
of life
Giving rise
to soul:
More than
the sum of your parts.
Earth—in us,
in me,
You have
become sensual and sensitive.
Blessed
earth!
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Copyright © 2019 and Communion of Life copyright © 1999 by Chris R. Glaser.
Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.
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