flesh inspirited

Make ready for the Christ, Whose smile, like lightning,

Sets free the song of everlasting glory

That now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite.

Thomas Merton, “The Victory,” The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New Directions: 1977), 115.

When God gives of Godself, one of two things happens: either flesh is inspirited or spirit is enfleshed.

                                                                                                                   Richard Rohr

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We carry the sacred

Holiness sleeps

In our flesh

Like dynamite

Ready to explode

To be felt and seen

By a watching world

So the all creation waits

For spirit enfleshed

To make itself known

And waits, and waits, and waits

As we, inspirited flesh

Struggle still with dissension

Fear, and greed

The wounds we carry in this sacred flesh

(or psyche)

our reminder of the cross of our humanity

perhaps it is time

for us to put aside childish things

and to “grow up into our incarnation” (Rohr)

and finally reflect

the image and likeness of the One

from whence we come

who is

Love