September 16, 2020
This poem by an unknown poet is taken from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, An Altar in the World. In this disembodied time of the pandemic, I love how it helps us to ground our bodies in Christ’s body, even our weaknesses, injuries and illnesses.

–The Rev. Ann Gillespie
We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ. He enters
my foot and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in Godhood.)

I move my foot, and at once
He appears in a flash of lightening.
Do my words seem blasphemous? ---Then
open your heart to Him

And let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love him,
We wake up inside Christ’s body

Where all our body, all over
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him
And he makes us utterly real.

And everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in him transformed

and recognized as whole, lovely
radiant in his light.
We awaken as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.