For the past few weeks, I’ve been participating in a writing practice called “27 Wildest Days”, by Laurie Wagner. Each day, she shares a poem with us, and then we write for 15 minutes, pen never leaving the page. Here’s what came in response to the prompt, “What if you knew?”
What if you knew how splendid and beautiful you really were? If you could see yourself as God sees – perhaps a little tattered around the edges, a butterfly at the end of its migration, glorious in its color and tiredness. Proud of its accomplishment? Maybe, but mostly just following its instincts and doing the next right thing. Drifting, fluttering gently, wending its delicate way toward something that felt right and good deep down, but that it didn’t really know for sure. Arriving exhausted, tenderly ragged, mature and stunning. Resting. Its heavy wings breathing open and closed, unaware that with each movement its scintillating loveliness was revealed. What if you knew that perhaps God sees us like this? Transformed, doing our best, being beautiful without even knowing.
What if you knew how much we are all connected? That things I do or leave undone have an impact. What if you knew deep down, that the water flowing in the nearby river also flows in your veins? That the bright fiery sun also burns in your very being? That the same dust that circling the stars also makes up this thing called a body? And that the breath that infuses you is also the spirit of God? What if you knew?
What if you knew that today might be your last day here on earth? That when you kissed your husband goodbye it might be the last time? Would you linger? Would you hold his bearded face in your hands, stroke his cheeks and say goodbye with your eyes? Would you lie in the sunshine? Hang laundry on the line? Climb into bed with a lanky sixteen year old and hold him despite his protests? Would you comb your twenty year old’s hair, massage his shoulders, and whisper into his grown-up ears that he would be okay and figure it out…mostly? Would you sit quietly under your favorite mother oak, listening to her rustles of welcome and gentleness, feeling her embrace you with energetic arms, holding you against her rough and rugged flowing heart? Would you video call your parents so you could search their worn and wrinkled faces, memorizing each line? Would you gaze into their eyes and tell them a thousand wordless thank-yous? (Originally published May 10, 2020 on former website. Has since been published in the December, 2020 issue of "Beginnings" Magazine by the American Holistic Nurses Association)