Body and Soul
Have you heard the tales of King Solomon? Oh, how he wanted the Queen of Sheba. He summoned her to come. She wasn’t sure she wanted him. And sent instead, a mother lode of gold. Solomon was unimpressed. The streets of his Kingdom were paved with the stuff. When Sheba finally arrived, she understood, her gold was infinitesimally insignificant. Solomon and Sheba married. Or was it Soul and Body that in a passion so awesome, birthed the Song of Songs?
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I have a friend who sat in reverence for her Guru every day. Years passed.The community became self-sufficient. They reached spiritual heights. Then one day, Teacher turned tormentor. Angel became devil. Peace became trauma. You could say, the air at the top became so clear, the Guru disappeared. The community was traumatized.
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Body
There is an ancient apartheid between soul and body.
Each has claimed the greater score.
For who has not made a body lord,
giving it reign with food and wine,
with doing and dreaming, sex and sleep?
Who has not made the flesh a territory,
draping and undraping the skin in cloth armor,
making it fat, making it thin,
dressing it up to win other bodies.
Inter-anatomical treaties are forged
for goods, sex, pleasure,
making little lords to annex,
to defend, to repress the loneliness
of the ego king.
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Soul
And Who has not made soul a Queen?
Perfuming the meditation, the 5/2/8 inhale-exhalation,
committed to a lifetime of spiritual seeking,
disciple of discipleship,
unwanting but for mind to tip
into the mystical, an MDMA positivity bliss,
high above emotion in prayer,
swimming inner ecstasies,
Deliriously serious,
she flies beyond the world,
putting its sufferings in a pretty God Box.
Queen’s twitter hashtag is
enlightenment or bust.
Unconnected to a body,
unhinged from emotions,
unthinking, unmoved, untouched
by overheated polar bears
or moaning teens caught unaware
in heart-fresh, holy love-making.
You’re right, please laugh, my tongue is in my cheek.
Soul or Body is incomplete without the holy other
.…
A door and a room full of treasure. These are like my body and soul.
What good is a room full of golden doubloons, unspent without a portal?
An eye and a lamp are like body and soul.
What good is a lamp if the eye is put out? And if the eye is bright,
it’s blind without the lamplight.
My body and soul are one living poem.
Meditation or mouth are futile alone.
Heaven and earth marry through their courtship.
Look at God and his relationship with Mary.
Look at Moses. He went up the mountain.
But he came down again;
in his arms the templates
for love and human kindness.
I have begun to understand, the egg must have a shell if you want to know the yolk. (And that’s no joke.) Without a shell, there is no yolk, no chick, no life, nothing to scramble, to devil, to express the divine unity, the romance, the eternal whole of Body and Soul, the celebration of Love and matter, the incarnation of God in you.
