The desert is calling me
to recall who I am
And remember my lineage
In blood and essence.
I am God's beloved offspring
Not needing trickery to gain his benediction.
I know I was blessed, when I was
in the womb conceived
By love's gladness to give all itself
In one particular seed.
The desert has called my soul
To remember what It always knew for sure
But willingly forgot, to gain benediction.
Through a haze of mystification
It pulled my unerring mind
To question everything It knew as real.
Confined with bewilderment,
Battered and confused,
I finally understood:
God is infinitely giving God-self as every being.
As a tree, a forest,
And every single bee.
As a woman I never saw
Burned alive many years ago.
As the men who convicted her.
As the Pope,
As me.
The desert is calling us to awake
Through tales of holy fools
Who lived and preached the Good Story
We never believed to be real.
The fools who saw the true glory
A wilderness reveal
In every tiny grain of sand
and every face they met:
God is infinitely giving God-Self, as every being.
As every particular living cell, be it heart or skin.
For his plenitude lies in this:
Giving all himself as every unique seed
Growing in the dark to be the one vine
He sees budding from time's beginning
And thirsts for its signature wine.
The desert was calling all along
confusion and character to dance together,
For singleness to emerge as the song
The body danced to its rhythm since ever
In rituals of abundance and love
to bestow on earth
renewal and continuity.
Spring is here! In the heat of the desert,
Unveiling the One who gives his all
As every tiny grain of sand,
and every barren soil.
As the Soul that dies into the wild
to live in remembrance of who she is:
A bride giving all herself!
For she takes a great delight
in being taken all
Heart and skin
In his likeness.
--Gisele Njeim