Body from Body
Posted on | February 22, 2010 | 2 Comments
These words showed up as I went through long-forgotten pictures from our younger years. A fine Ash Wednesday homily brought them to rest. I thought I’d share them with you.
This body from body
erupting
in water and blood,
pleasure and hope,
knows hunger and sucking, excretion and sleep.
This body of energy,
leaping and jumping,
dancing and running,
lifting and swimming,
knows motion and balance, upside and down.
These bodies with eyes
seeing beauty and wonder,
with ears hearing music and voices,
know love and delight beyond words.
These bodies now coupling,
growing new bodies,
their bodies one snake in one body eternal,
know self beyond body, love beyond skin.
These bodies now sitting and thinking,
tenderly stroking the skins of their pasts,
know time beyond space, sight beyond sense.
This body of memory,
breath of a breath,
at one with a body no longer its own,
gives back to the earth,
a life beyond bodies.
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William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. Click to read my complete bio...
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838. Memories of their journeys through oppression, estrangement and reconciliation reverberate in the lives of three contemporary students brought together by their interests in ecology. Through their often difficult friendship and a surprising discovery they begin to unravel the mystery of their estrangements, struggles, and deep connections to each other and to the earth.
Based on extensive research in the United States, South Africa, and England, this book takes readers through a sweeping saga of love and conflict in the context of emigration, invasion, slavery, and exploitation. Through its stories we are invited to see our fractured human history from within the sensibilities of an earth that seeks the flourishing of all creatures and transcends their deaths within its life.
I welcome you to read Excerpts from Red Clay Blood River.
You can also view some Reader's Responses to the book.
If you are already reading Red Clay, Blood River, check out the Reader's Guide and Glossary of Names.
If you are in a Book Club, go to the Guide for Discussion Groups.
If you want to know more about people who helped me in writing this book check out the People Present at the Creation.
February 22nd, 2010 @ 4:16 pm
Love this — and so in the same vain as my Lenten direction — mind if I quote it? (Obviously w/ attribution)
February 22nd, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
Wow! what a powerful array of imagery! I should use it in my course on theology with or without heaven and hell. Don’t you think so, Bill?