the tender touch of soul-sole with soil

in dawning cool light, imagine that tender touch of soul-sole with soil

Maybe it was not the women. Those first witnesses who stood before an empty tomb in fear. Jesus had already left the tomb at that point. Maybe it was not the women…

I arrived at the arroyo hondo for sunrise this morning to witness Earth turning to bring the light. My last post alluded to my preference of hibernating like a bear when winter darkness comes. Perhaps it was a foreshadow of what was to come, because I have been absent for a while. This day which symbolizes resurrection, the defeat of Empire and our renewed witness of the Sacred indwelling in all creation seemed the time to come back. I had thought I would talk of the sunrise, hope, and the promise of resurrection in the midst of COVID-19. But that was not the message I was meant to hear from the wild today.

As I laid down to touch the cold, dusty, Earth up on a windswept hill, I imagined Jesus’ feet walking, ever so tenderly, quietly, through my view slightly obscured by dormant desert grasses. In that moment, I wondered… maybe it was not the women. 

It was the dirt. Earth was that first witness when Jesus emerged from the tomb just before daybreak. Oh, what that chilled, dusty ground must have felt like beneath his feet as he took those first steps. Did he dig in his toes and let the dust settle under his toenails and into the creases? Did the Earth rise up to meet his soles/soul with each step and embrace him? 

It is so that dust/dirt/Earth/soil/humus lures the sacred process of death, decomposition, and life. On this day of resurrection, whether a physical-individual-bodily one, or the resurrection of a movement grounded in love, there is one thing I now know to be certain. It was the dirt that first embraced those steps of resurrection. It is that which grounds us and gives us strength in our own death, decomposition, and birthing processes.

I dug my fingers into the dirt as I laid there looking to the mountains for the sun and longed for resurrection to come.

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Tender Embrace, resurrect me

Tender Embrace
Who dwells in the dust of all dawnings
Who held those steps of resurrection
that crisp desert morning
i long to be enfolded in You
and re-member the sacred journey
from death to new life