Let all your pronouns
dissolve into “Thou.”
You are not a gender
or a tribe,
a nation or a race.
You are a Person
born to gaze into my face.
I am a Person
born to gaze into yours.
Our religion
is a broken heart,
spilling light
out of darkness.
We meet in the smell
of food,
giving thanks
to creatures smaller
than we are,
the bee, the seed,
the raindrop.
The Braided Way is a framework to see every faith tradition as a strand, braided into a larger whole of spiritual awareness. In the Braided Way, combining spiritual practice from various faiths allow us to explore sacred experience and wonder in forms that resonate with our personal spiritual needs and sacred intuitions. In today’s culture, many people shun religious dogma, but yearn for spiritual connection. The Braided Way allows the ceremonies and practices of multiple faiths to be available without the confinements of cultural dogma.
Dear Alfred,
Thanks for transporting us with your evocative interweaving of gratitude, and our common humanity. Your expression “We meet in the smell of food”, reminded me of the resonant expatriate dilemmas, evocatively served by Ryley Graham, in his recent essay: Walking to Pho in Hanoi.
https://panoramajournal.org/issues/issue-13-fire/fire-walking-to-pho-in-hanoi/
You are definitely a Cosmic poet!. I look forward to your contributions.