Be God's Body

Every woman's body is divine. Every man's 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. Chakras blossom here, Krishna loka and Brahma loka hang on this tree like ripe fruit, inside your body.

Esoteric paths are not as spiritual as the streaming current of your nerves, yearning, sated, whole. Every haj leads back to your body. All this orchard of sinews needs to burst into blossom is the sunlight of Awareness. The unutterably delicate friction of breath on your breastbone ignites the same fire that illuminates the galaxies. Follow your exhalation, make a pilgrimage to the sacred mud between your toes. Your weight is a prayer. Gravity is grace.

You are a lightning bolt connecting earth and sky. Your axis mundi is cruciform, nexus of North, South, East, and West, radiance of the Dark Mother into form. You are a temple where angels meet their animal familiars, celestial gandharvas descend to learn plant songs, and the Holy Spirit glistens through the wish-granting prism of a dust mote. "Therefore glorify God in your body" (1 Cor. 6:20).

Laugh, cry, dance, and meditate. 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.

The Goddess, who is the supreme power of creation, dwells in your body as this very breath. Delight in Her.

Thank you Mother for this human form, God's flute, and for your breath, which plays it, and for these wounds, where your fingers touch and move, to make skillful notes of melody. My wounds are golden cups that overflow with cinnabar wine. Let them stream with the bittersweet music that makes my song unique. For our wound compose us, just as our wonder makes us whole


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