I wrote this piece in the last few days.

It’s a simple prayer really; it has a lot of uses and it echoes a number of sacred acts.

i.

my body welcomes your body

my blood rises to meet your blood

our body welcomes your body

our blood rises to meet your blood

come to me deep, i am hungry

i thirst over and over

collide in me, divine

ii.

my face turns to the sun

turns to the sun to feel warmth

my blood and bones touch your

body and blood and bones

under the sun

i drink you in

iii.

my body welcomes your body

our blood rises to meet your blood

i hear the song of the tui

the fantails dance beside me

by this i know, the body knows

death and life are coming

my body touches your body

tells my soul, thirst no more

hunger not, here is our body

death and life colliding

in our oneness

Words About The Body

There’s a ritual many of us partake of each week or month that has a tone of Holy Sacrament. It is visceral, complex and symbolic. We take bread and say that it is the body of man. We do not say it is ‘like’ the body of a man, we say simply ‘it is’. We eat the bread and our bodies respond. Tastebuds activate, tongues moisten and the body welcomes the body back inside. We take wine or juice and pour it. This time, even more primitive, we say that wine is blood and we swallow deeply, blood into our blood. Lips flush, cheeks redden and we taste.

The intimacy of eating and drinking, the act of consuming another person’s body is not unlike other intimate acts. Oneness is the goal, union and communion the objective of these acts. The body willing, the mind open, the heart and soul receiving one person into another. Adopting that personhood into ourselves.

What a gift of beauty, what an act of love to welcome another’s body into your body and to realise the Christ ritual of Holy Sacrament is deeply personal; the idea of communion with the Divine a holy sacred and intimate one.