Dirt, Blood, Prayer
How have you been, First name / My Dear?
This last month has been a tremendous lesson in rhythmic listening. I celebrated my bearthday, cared for my beautiful niece and nephew, and organized a philanthropic convening for immigrant rights. I have made some seismic decisions for my life, and I am slowly introducing them to my long-held belief narratives - the way you blend paint colors in a moving wheel. It is taking time for me to believe in the new future I am embracing for myself, and companioning for others. I am reminded daily how much effort it takes, ironically, to redirect the currents of life into a pace that the earth-body, and all beings, truly need.
So when I read Lesley Wheeler's poem these past weeks, I was caught between chest-tightening and illuminating moments, both overcome and satiated by the responsibility of time and creation. I knew I had to bring these words into our letter today. Wheeler writes:
The only way to pray is through my feet,
earthward, jolted in return by the fizz
of a spiking current…
Can you feel the invitation here?
Early in July I played outside with my littles. My niece, four years old, and I walked barefoot through the backyard, catching and releasing ants that had made their way into the house. It has become our practice together. I could witness in her heart a reconciliation, a path of mutual earthward return. But what comes first?
I know we must relate differently to the earth-body. And I wonder if, once again, our pursuit of that awakening quietly slips back into a paradigm of human superiority, just wearing softer clothes. The question I keep circling isn't only what we must do to tend the earth-body, and the bodies of all beings. It's what we, the shared bodies of life's expression, are being called to listen to in each other. What if the courage it takes to trust our own capacity for pain and joy in companionship is the same courage this reconciliation asks of us? Wheeler offers a way in:
I reach down. There’s something animate,
mycelial, that touches me back. It’s a species
of love, a thinking-spike, a zinging circuit
of energy and dirt, blood and spirit—
plutonic conversation, mostly wordless.
The way I’ve found to pray is through my feet…
This invitation remind me of a line from one of Beyoncé's songs Yaya “my family lived and died in America, good ol’ USA…whole lotta red in that white and blue…history can’t be erased.” This land I walk daily holds the buried bodies of loves I once imagined a future with. Many lands hold such memories for us all. What, then, makes us belong to each other, if not this shared truth? We carry many futures inside our blood, aching to be recognized, materialized, given form. We cannot birth them all in one lifetime. But we can, in this lifetime, lower ourselves into that circuit of energy and dirt, blood and spirit, and receive the path we are meant to walk, carve, and cultivate.
What holds the potential for our deepest liberation, if not this kind of anointing? These are holy energies. Wheeler writes on:
Not that earth loves me, exactly…
She wants me to return the mess
of my only body, pray from head through feet
as I sink, unthinking ash, into love’s circuit.
We are indications of creation's vitality, seeking full expression, mess and beauty both. As I move heart-first into life's ongoing quench for the totality of my being, and my quench for life in the same way, I wonder if we might walk these paths together, my friend?
For your inquiry:
How have you found to pray? From where in your being do you pray?
If capacity and safety permit, consider going on a prayer walk.
I’m listening to what comes up for you.
Until we meet again <3
