Thanksgiving – tscottmiller

On this Sunday without Sangha, a memory from last year (27 Nov 2015 — the day after Thanksgiving) popped up on my Facebook newsfeed.

A verse inspired by a beloved park trail where I’ve logged countless miles in a walking-running-praying meditation and, a hundred times over, awakened curiosity and understanding and mapped pathways toward reconciliation.

❤ today, another verse for remembering to remember…for tending to our wholeness and seeing a feast in all things:

i walk for clarity

to release those deep + wordless groanings
that tense my muscles, pluck-stretch my nerves, + accelerate my pulse.

movement is prayer — pleading, seeking, remembering, communing,
soothing heart + spirit

is it my favorite posture of meditation — fine-tuning my capacity to listen, discern, + take skillful, compassion-centered action

clearing up space for love-wisdom to prevail

#TouchingTheEarth #EmbodiedPrayer #EmbodiedWisdom #TheHeartAtRest

❤ a prayer for remembering ❤

The History of Thanksgiving You Weren’t Taught In School via attn:

i move along a rain-soaked path

pink tubular bodies stretch out
in full prostration across my trail, beckoning:
feel your heart into those feet,
so every step blesses the earth.

a few, once desiccated, now rehydrated, leave coiled graffiti-like impressions:
life wuz here!
keep it movin’!

gravity relinquishes its pull on my body, offering it up
into the ever-ready hands of spirit

briefly i levitate…
soles soar over a smattering of broken branches + wrinkled leaves…

i see nature’s clues
(autumn’s stand-in for rose petals, i joke)
and picture a young wood nymph pointing me to the altar

trees line the sanctuary aisle
as holy witnesses to my prayer
and as lofty pews
for curious squirrels who ring around the trunks to peek over at me
while jays, perched on high, trumpet my procession

i glide faster,
sweat and breath awaken
memories of land ancestors

i sense the hearts and spirits of
native-born brown
and stolen black bodies

thrumming life — once desiccated — nourished now by over-saturated clouds replenishing the soil

my waltzing cadence drums out the beat of their sacrifices:

tilled, toiled, kept.
loved, honored, bled.
harvested, shared, fed.

song penetrates deeply —
a systolic pressure burrowing
from head to ears, heart to toes
rhythm from beyond yonder
touching me touching the earth

because of them
i continue solid, whole, and free

Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

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