The thing that makes the grass grow also makes my bones snap into place.
The thing that releases endorphins when I see a fluffy bunny is the thing that rips stars into the stardust that makes up my subcutaneous layer of skin.
I search for connection in big city lights and the beds of strangers, but fail to see that the river that runs through the valley is the bloodstream that runs through me.
The stars collapse and feed the clouds,
the clouds collapse into rain,
the rain falls on the seeds,
collapsed and hidden in the earth.
My hands—my phalanges covered by skin with a thousand valleys running through it—pick the harvest
(the stardust harvest)
and lift it to my mouth like the priest lifts the elements of eucharist to be blessed and broken.
My teeth break the harvest and my body is blessed with another day of nourishment.
“Give us this day our daily bread,”
we pray to the thing that collapses stars into stardust and clouds into rain,
and grows food from seeds to fill my little bones.
The scientists look through telescopes and microscopes and make equations to explain the things, but sometimes they forget to see the wonder of the thing that makes their eyeballs work—not the synapses but the thing behind them.
The spirit of the cosmos, the thing that buzzed before the big bang.
The thing that roots the trees in ground.
The roots look like my nerve endings and my veins—the ones that pump blood through my body, the ones that root me in existence.
My bones are a trunk and my veins are tendrils and my nerves are leaves that sway in the breeze.
My eyes are fruit that nourish me as I see the glory that abounds around me that I’m too often blind to—like the scientists who see the things but not the thing behind it,
who don’t see the absurdity of atoms or the mystery of molecules.
I’m a tree and my bones are the trunk and my veins are the roots that keep me alive,
and my leaves are where the resurrection is—where the birds stop to visit, where the stardust hits when it falls.
And you are the thing that makes the trees grow,
and snaps into place my bones,
and grows me like a seed,
buried in the earth,
just like you were.
–Marissa Kizer 2016
Writing Group: Fridays, March 4 – April 29
Theology and Arts offers you yet another opportunity to explore your creative side while growing deeper in your spiritual life. This writing group, led by Dr. Tiffany Hall McClung, will meet once a week for 8 weeks during which time we will use resources to guide us in creative writing exercises, discuss our goals for our writing lives, and support one another in our writing endeavors. This will be a place for you to explore writing for the very first time or to help a seasoned writer to seek feedback from others.
Contact tmcclung@memphisseminary.edu for more information.
This group is free and open to everyone!
This piece by Marissa Kizer was written during one week’s Writing Group.