Sharifa Oppenheimer

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Conversations with Gaia

Conversations with Gaia

 

Whether we know it or not, we are always in communion with the living earth.  Each sip of water, each breath, every bite of food is a conversation waiting to begin.  We drink cool water ~ and fresh rain is calling out to us.  The tang of arugula on our tongue ~ and the whole garden smiles.  The next inhalation brings a sweet elixir of sunlight, photosynthesis, and a branch of budding leaves.

 

Like conversation, litany is composed of call and response.  An invitation bodies-forth into the world;   will our embodied voices respond in harmony?  This litany of wild graces ~ water, breath, food ~remains an invitation.  Until our bodies reply with gratitude… melody … movement. Now the sacred dance begins.  Let us reply to these everyday wild graces and move to the song inside our heart. 

 

From A Litany of Wild Graces, Meditations on Sacred Ecology:

 Ice Caps

 

Folding linen napkins 

embroidered pears in corners

the ones used on Father’s Day

 

coleslaw, baked beans

children, grandchildren

parents, cousins

 

she listens.

 

Arctic ice falls

as summer rain

onto the kitchen garden;

birds sing 

exhaling forest scents;

prehistoric ferns grow

to Pangean proportions.

 

Here is the world

of love and pathos.

This is the place 

she touches daily.

In this place

her love listens,

and replies

her hands folding 

while folded in prayer.

 

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