Poetry: How do words become flesh?

How do you pray?

Do you pray with hands folded?

Do you air out your words on the line? Do you clip them down one by one, and then let them dance in the breeze until they smell fresher, lighter?

Do you tell yourself stories of meaning and mystery? Do you let the metaphors dance in the shadows of your bedroom while you remember your past and invent your fate?

Do you pray in the silence? Do you pray with song? Do you pray on the busy streets?

Do you slice up your words and put them into a pot to simmer like stew until they become a nourishment thicker than alphabet soup?

Do you go through doors to places that are wordless, spaces where the only sound heard is the buzz of light warming you? Do you let words illumine you?

Do you pick up your pen and draw circles in your journal? Do you then color those circles in with lines and dreams, a blend of babbles and breath? Do you ask Spirit to help you to make sense of what comes from your imagination, from the cavern of your soul? Do you ask the Spirit to help you make sense of anything?

How do you pray?

Do you pray with poetry or psalms? Do you pray in your sleep? Do you pray under water?

Do you let the word take the shape of your fleshy, wrinkled, brain?

Do words tick in the territory of your heart? Are they fleshy like moving muscle, tightening and expanding and allowing for the flow of living blood?

Do you allow your womb to expand, for the Spirit to write beauty and truth through you?

Do you?

Adapted for 2019 Women’s Christmas at Marywood Franciscan Spirituality Center. An essay version of this poem first appeared on the Image blog Good Letters in December 2018 and was inspired in part by How Do You Write? by Richard Chess.