Thursday, January 01, 2015
Jan Phillips––Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity (poem)
Jan Phillips is one of the most significant spiritual teachers/voices of our time. I highly recommend that you check out her website at www.janphillips.com/ It is filled with wise and delightful writings. She "gets it" and describes it in beautiful language. Especially note her "Interview with Jesus" as if by Jon Stewart on her Museletter, September, 2010.
She is filled with life and creativity, and inspires us to be the same.
Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity
I will need a birch tree, a maple, a redwood, a white pine, a sequoia, a
cedar, a palm tree.
I want soil from Nigeria, Palestine, the Himalayas, Mississippi,
Auschwitz, Newtown, Alcatraz.
I want water from the Ganges River, Glacier Bay, the Sea of Galilee, the
Tigris and Euphrates, the Pacific and the Atlantic, the River Jordan,
the Dead Sea, Lake Bonaparte.
I want air from Kathmandu, Calcutta, Cairo, Nazareth, Athens, the Arctic
Circle,
Mexico City, Port-au-Prince, Baghdad, Kabul.
I want near me a bison, a wolf, an eagle, a silverback gorilla, a
giraffe, a kitten, a
fawn, a black bear, a polar bear, a golden retriever.
From the waters, I want a humpback whale, a porpoise, a sea turtle, a
manta ray, a
flounder, a harp seal.
From the heavens I want a comet, a rainbow, a lightning bolt, a blue
moon, a summer
storm, a snowy night, a mauve and golden sunrise.
I want fire from my morning candle, the farthest star in the Milky Way,
a campfire
in the Adirondacks, the altar at St. Joseph's Provincial House, the
funeral pyres in
Varanasi, the Buddhist temples in Kyoto.
I want a vestment made of materials from Gujarat, India; Lhasa, Tibet;
Cape Town,
South Africa; St. John's, Newfoundland; Oslo, Norway; northern Ireland;
central
Australia; East Germany; and South Central Los Angeles.
I want co-celebrants from an Ethiopian village, a Harlem tenement, a
nursing home in Selma, a prisoner in Guantanamo, a Harvard Law class,
the Smokey Mountain garbage dump in Manila, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
I want bread kneaded and pressed by the hands of millionaires,
chambermaids,
sherpas, Bolivian tin workers, emigrants and immigrants from a hundred
countries,
three Fortune 500 CEOs, nine Exxon board members, 14 Chicago gang
members,
and seven out of work shrimpers from the Gulf of Mexico.
I want a choir of Chinese peasants, Israeli kindergartners, Japanese
Bonsai masters,
Navajo weavers, Zuni potters, Tlingit totem pole makers, and African
diamond miners.
Once assembled, we will celebrate the sacrament that contains them all.
We will sing till the earth wobbles in her orbit, give praise and thanks
till wine runs from the sugar maple. We will bow to the holiness we see
in each other forgiving the past, blessing the present, committing to a
future that is good for everyone.
And this will be the sacrament of Holy Unity
a welcome to the dawning of an Uncommon Era.
- Jan Phillips
She is filled with life and creativity, and inspires us to be the same.
Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity
I will need a birch tree, a maple, a redwood, a white pine, a sequoia, a
cedar, a palm tree.
I want soil from Nigeria, Palestine, the Himalayas, Mississippi,
Auschwitz, Newtown, Alcatraz.
I want water from the Ganges River, Glacier Bay, the Sea of Galilee, the
Tigris and Euphrates, the Pacific and the Atlantic, the River Jordan,
the Dead Sea, Lake Bonaparte.
I want air from Kathmandu, Calcutta, Cairo, Nazareth, Athens, the Arctic
Circle,
Mexico City, Port-au-Prince, Baghdad, Kabul.
I want near me a bison, a wolf, an eagle, a silverback gorilla, a
giraffe, a kitten, a
fawn, a black bear, a polar bear, a golden retriever.
From the waters, I want a humpback whale, a porpoise, a sea turtle, a
manta ray, a
flounder, a harp seal.
From the heavens I want a comet, a rainbow, a lightning bolt, a blue
moon, a summer
storm, a snowy night, a mauve and golden sunrise.
I want fire from my morning candle, the farthest star in the Milky Way,
a campfire
in the Adirondacks, the altar at St. Joseph's Provincial House, the
funeral pyres in
Varanasi, the Buddhist temples in Kyoto.
I want a vestment made of materials from Gujarat, India; Lhasa, Tibet;
Cape Town,
South Africa; St. John's, Newfoundland; Oslo, Norway; northern Ireland;
central
Australia; East Germany; and South Central Los Angeles.
I want co-celebrants from an Ethiopian village, a Harlem tenement, a
nursing home in Selma, a prisoner in Guantanamo, a Harvard Law class,
the Smokey Mountain garbage dump in Manila, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
I want bread kneaded and pressed by the hands of millionaires,
chambermaids,
sherpas, Bolivian tin workers, emigrants and immigrants from a hundred
countries,
three Fortune 500 CEOs, nine Exxon board members, 14 Chicago gang
members,
and seven out of work shrimpers from the Gulf of Mexico.
I want a choir of Chinese peasants, Israeli kindergartners, Japanese
Bonsai masters,
Navajo weavers, Zuni potters, Tlingit totem pole makers, and African
diamond miners.
Once assembled, we will celebrate the sacrament that contains them all.
We will sing till the earth wobbles in her orbit, give praise and thanks
till wine runs from the sugar maple. We will bow to the holiness we see
in each other forgiving the past, blessing the present, committing to a
future that is good for everyone.
And this will be the sacrament of Holy Unity
a welcome to the dawning of an Uncommon Era.
- Jan Phillips
