I read a version of this poem as an invocation, and again to close, during a small virtual gathering with a faith community in California earlier this summer. As we move into the last days of August, a time of transition for many, I invite you to use it yourself as a way to root into your most embodied way of being.
Church of the Wild
This evening
and all evenings,
afternoons and
daybreaks
Let your attention
be a prayer
rolling with fog
over still waters
Let your attention
be a prayer
absorbing absolute or abating sun,
an ingestion of all kinds of light
Let your attention
be a prayer
joining birds and frogs
in making a joyful noise
Let your attention
be a prayer
one that fuses
with all other prayers
rising in a great cloud
of collected healing,
earth’s congregation
connected in community
attention to wild silence
one shared gateway to devotion
untamed and embodied
a holy refuge, a return to ourselves.
This is wonderful. In Anishinaabe culture, we say to live an Anishinaabe life is to make every footstep a prayer. When I teach my poetry workshops, I speak of that, then describe how poetry, and its commitment to attention, means that living a poet's life is to make every footstep a poem. Which is really the same thing, isn't it? Regardless, it all boils down to attention.
So lovely. What a perfect invocation for every day. It may be the only thing I feel certainty about--that God's nature has to be wild and the nature of prayer our noticing of it. Thank you, Heidi!