Be God's Body

Every woman's body is divine. Every man's body is divine. Every Muslim's body is divine. Every Jewish body is divine. Be God's body, that is the answer. What was the question?

To honor God in your body is the most radical revolution. To honor God in another's body is political healing.

The gates of paradise are the portals of your flesh. You cannot transcend your body, but you can journey through your flesh to the stars. Each atom is filled with the sky. Angels arrive and depart in your nuclei. Christ is born again and again at the core of a proton. No need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb: you were washed in your mother's blood at birth. That was salvation.

The sacred practices of every wisdom tradition are techniques of Incarnation. They do not negate, but glorify, our human flesh. The bread of the Eucharist is the body of Jesus. Tribal shamans draw the Spirit from plants, animals, stones. Grace flows, not down from heaven, but up through the soles of the Qi master's feet. The whirl of a Sufi is body-meditation. Buddha's breath is lower than your belly button, in the Hara. The Tree of Life is your spine, growing in the paradise of your nerve garden. Ah, this Eden, where chakras blossom, each a doorway to the galaxies. Ah, this Vrindavan, where Brahma Loka, Krishna Loka, and all celestial kingdoms ripen, the bio-miraculous fruit inside you.

Esoteric pathways are nowhere near as liberating as these currents of protoplasm, yearning, sated, whole. Just drift with them into who you are. Stay in all directions at once. Be everywhere through the ineluctable suchness of your body.

Every pilgrimage leads back to the mortal ground where you are standing right now. If you must perambulate, then perform walking meditation in, and through, and toward your own embodiment. With merely a beam of the sunlight of pure awareness, this orchard of sinews and soft tissue bursts into blossom. And the ineffably delicate friction of breath on breastbone ignites a fire that illuminates Andromeda. Just follow your exhalation, make a haj to the sacred mud between your toes. Your weight is prayer. Your gravity is grace.

Are you not a lightning bolt connecting earth and sky, East and West, your axis mundi cruciform? You radiate Dark Mother Matter into sparkling sod. That is why you are here, to hold this bodily space for the cosmic in-gathering. Your body is a temple where angels meet their animal familiars, celestial gandharvas arrive to learn plant songs, Holy Spirits glisten through the wish-granting prism of a dust mote.

It is written in scripture, 1 Corinthians 6:20: "Therefore glorify God in your body." How? Simply by paying attention. Notice the Goddess. Delight in Her. Observe, with humble gratitude, the supreme power of creation, flowing into your lungs.

The eye is holy. The nose is holy. Lips and tongue are holy. Holy the clitoris. Holy the belly and buttocks. Holy each wrinkle and crow's foot. Laugh, cry, dance, meditate. Thank you, Mother.

Thank you Mother, Lake of Tears, Flame of Emptiness, Song in Search of a Tongue. Thank you for this human form, which is your flute, and for your breath, which plays it; and for these wounds, where your fingers compose skillful notes. Let my broken places be golden cups overflowing with cinnabar wine. Use all that is hurting and hollow in me to make your bittersweet melody.

Written for the celebration of Navratri, the Nine Days of Mother Divine (Oct 3 - Oct 12) most sacred portal of time in the Vedic year. Engraving by William Blake