The hands are churches that worship the world.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Daily”
To pour water over the aloe,
the cyclamen, the jade plant, the cactus,
this, too, is prayer. Prayer in touching
my own dry lips, marveling at the fullness
beneath fingertips. Worship in hefting
the tea pot by its thick black handle.
Worship in squeezing the sudsy warm sponge.
Just yesterday, while we were driving,
Art said to me, “Why not open to the marvelous?”
I equated marvelous with the grand, the inexplicable,
even the strange. It didn’t occur to me then
that gripping the smooth, leather arc of steering wheel
is marvelous, cradling the white paper cup full of coffee
is marvelous, fingering the waffle pattern on the dishcloth
as I fold it is marvelous. Marvelous, flipping through
skin-thin pages of notebooks. Marvelous
and sacred, my palm resting on my husband’s thigh.
Marvelous, these knobby knuckles, how they
curl around the hair brush. Sacred,
the pillowed pads of these fingers, how they
trace the lines of my husband’s face,
how they twist and tug wool around the knitting
needles, how they tap at the keyboard to fashion
language out of feeling, how they rest above my heart
and translate into praise that beat, faithful and familiar.
Posts Tagged ‘sacred’
Manual
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chore, daily, habit, hands, sacred, worship on March 18, 2026| 5 Comments »
When we gather to wonder about the sacred,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloth, sacred, wonder, worth on December 7, 2024| 7 Comments »
we begin as separate scraps of cloth,
squares left on the seamstress’s floor.
Perhaps we believe we have nothing to offer
because we are not more whole.
Wonder becomes the needle.
The sacred is green thread.
Communion fills the seams.
And who, or what, is the seamstress?
Of course, we were confused
about our worth. But my god,
it is beautiful when we can’t help but see
how essential we are—the material of us
gathered into the grand cloth.
It is painful to be pierced in the joining.
No one wants to know this.
And yet each time we wonder together,
and wonder, and wonder,
we learn again just how we fit,
how integral we are, how surely
the cloth needs us all.
Consecration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, breath, sacred, song on October 29, 2024| 11 Comments »
Even a song can be an altar,
a place to bring an offering—
as on this anxious day
when I can’t stop giving my heart
to love songs for the broken world.
And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar
on which the song is placed,
which would mean what is sacred
might be ever flowing through us,
a space where we might meet the divine.
To believe this doesn’t change
the song, but it changes everything
about the singer.
On the Long Drive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, miracle, red-tailed hawk, sacred on October 18, 2024| 9 Comments »
In the cottonwood tree
beside the road
sat the red-tailed hawk
on a barren branch,
utterly still,
and though they are common,
hulking and bulky,
that didn’t stop me
from thrilling
in its whitish breast,
its short, hooked beak,
the branch an altar—
slender and dark,
and though I passed it
in seconds,
seconds are all it takes
for whatever is sacred in me
to be called to
by what’s sacred
in the world.
Hours later,
I still wonder why
the heart leaps up so.
I don’t know, but
that is perhaps itself
the miracle—
that some part of us
knows how to fall in love
with a bird on branch,
its body still,
while all around it
the wind.
One Roadtrip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, roadtrip, sacred, singing on June 23, 2023| 2 Comments »
this song we sing together
as the miles tick by
my temple
Temple
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, brokenness, sacred, self image on January 13, 2022| 11 Comments »
O body, cracked bell
that still sings when struck,
O leaky cup,
O broken stem,
I love you, body,
your crooked path,
your crumbling walls,
your faulty math.
I love the way
you stopped believing
you could ever
hold it all,
how you began
to let yourself
become the one
that’s being held.
I love the graffiti
on your inner halls—
scrawled names of all
who shaped you.
O body, my wreck,
my holey glove,
my street worn sole,
my crumpled page,
forgive me for years
of trying to fix you,
for believing the fable
of whole,
you, my perfect
splattered heart,
my stuttered hymn,
my sacred
begging bowl.
Letter to Emily in October
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emily dickinson, moon, place, poem, poetry, sacred on October 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »
They say you left your house just once
in your last fifteen years—
you slipped alone through veil of night
to see a new-built church.
And rumor says the moon was full
when you escaped your walls—
you had no need for candlelight,
the evening led you well.
Tonight round shines the Hunter’s moon—
so dazzling is the dome
that all the world feels like a church
and night itself a poem.
Perhaps that’s what you understood
and lost your need to leave—
each room, each place is holy
and has a gift to give.
Orvis Hot Springs, April 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, hot springs, love, miracle, poems, poetry, sacred on April 1, 2012| 7 Comments »
Sitting alone in warm water
with the sun doing what the sun does
when given a clear, clear sky,
everything seems possible.
Imagine, the earth heats this water
before it enters the rounded stone pool
and this seems miracle enough
to make me think that whatever is sacred
in this life might be very, very simple.
Simple as it is, I don’t understand
how it works—just as I do not understand
the heart with its longing to love.
Doesn’t it remember the hurt?
Doesn’t it remember the walls crashing down,
the rubble, the wreckage, the stench?
Doesn’t it remember the long, slow
blossoming of ache? How it unfurled
like the chokecherry tree in the yard—
tiny buds, tiny buds, tiny buds,
larger buds, then bloom! A riot of bloom!
I recently read about frogs, how
if they jump into a pot of boiling water
they immediately will jump out
and survive. But if they are put
in a pot of cold water and the fire
is lit and the temperature increase
is slow, then they will stay in the pot
even though it is getting uncomfortable,
even though it is more and more hot,
they will stay until they are boiled.
And dead. Does the heart learn from this?
Apparently not.
Here I am sitting alone
in warm, warm water, the sun
burning red the skin on my chest,
and all I can think is how good it feels
to be naked, to be warm, to be alive,
and to let the heart love, to love despite.
Oh foolish woman. Oh pleasure
in being a fool, how it burns.
Eight Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, gratitude, haiku, integrity, letting go, nothing, sacred on January 5, 2012| 2 Comments »
evening news headline
Man Lucky To Be Alive
it is all of us
*
all this letting go,
said the hands, and nothing
to show for it
*
standing naked in
the downpour, the biggest part
of me does not get wet
*
I bet somewhere there’s
lively applause for all this
beauty we’re making
*
all those years holding
up a ceiling when it was
time to live outside
*
God said nothing
and I listened closer and
really heard nothing
*
your body,
there is not one hair that
isn’t holy
*
I keep no secrets,
the wind said, so no one can
ever blackmail me