One of the fifteen RSCJ staying at our house these days is a musician well known within Latin America for her singing, lyrics, and guitar playing. At some moment we were talking about how experiences become language which can then become poetry or lyrics. And, sometimes one type of writing becomes something else entirely when seen though a different lens.

Anyway, I took a prose piece and broke it out into lines to see what would happen and I thought I’d offer it here.

I Believe

In the communion 
of earthly elements—
bread and wine—and
that we too 
are earthly elements,
we who spark and shine,
cleave, combust, create.

I believe that when the
bread, the wine, are taken in
together as one, we know again
the Great Becoming—all elements,
one table, one Source,
one awakening.

I believe that we are each and we are all
in essence, in substance, in amazement,
of Earth and Source,
God and our Grounding.
And this communion, 
the blessing and wonder of it,
has unsettling implications:

No longer can I be inert,
no longer impermeable, no longer
alone, no longer so different
than neighbour or unknown stranger,
than sand or moss or vine,
than tree, than bloom,
than the honeybee.

I believe in the Resurrection, in community,
in discovery and revelation,
in wonder and in awe, and in
contemplative curiosity.

I believe in Mystery, in
the more to come, and
the quiet thrill
of not knowing.

Kimberly M. King