I ended Saturday’s DM on the sensual and indigenous ceremonies with a promise to share the poem composed by M.C. Richards born of an honoring Flower Pelting Ceremony on the event of the 25th anniversary of her guide, Centering. Right here it’s.
Pelted by Magnificence
(after an American Indian Flower Ritual)
The facility of affection obtained within the physique: This was the Competition!
how we stood and confronted each other
and we took arms
and the love got here.
And all of the flowers swarmed about our heads:
deep, deep the sting goes.
Let love be welcomed the second it seeks us.
In my flesh I really feel it nonetheless,
the shock and awe, the enjoyment,
warming and swelling in my limbs and stomach,
O miraculous conception! O angels tumbling by means of the air!
How actual it’s, the Christscript branded throughout our lips:
that we will love each other—as if the world may ever be the identical.
Over the sting, into the nicely, the abyss,
idiodically amorous,
nibbling on the inexperienced fronds and flinging them!
Pelted by magnificence and peace,
a mobile recording, every tiny vessel
lovecrazed, opening.
The fountain erupts, cascades,
and we want to die in it, be different,
be one in an alchemy of eros,
that lad with the arrows who shoots blind.
The facility of affection is obtained within the physique,
our first and primal dwelling.
Not sufficient is fabricated from incarnation, the mysteries of delivery,
of embodiments right here like this in each other:
your eyes and my arched again,
our fingers softening.
After all now we dance in a different way,
bowing and dipping and turning to the fragile drum.
After all we reside now within the dread of our disguises.
We all know our physique and provide it,
We all know our want and carry our begging bowl.
Now hear with braveness our personal love cries,
the tender shout of readiness, sure,
I’ll, I do, sure, allow us to obtain into our our bodies
the divine pulse, anointed with petals,
awaken and go forth modified.
Now really are we god’s fools,
lilies of the sphere, no thought for the morrow,
feeding strangers and comforting the fearful,
doing good to those that damage us,
carrying blossoms to beat magnificence and peace into our bones.*
MC tells concerning the expertise that gave delivery to so marvelous a poem (I take into account it her greatest ever) this manner: This poem was written October 13, 1989 after a ceremony through which this ritual was carried out. At its climax an enormous basket of flowers was poured over the poet’s head, engulfing her of their multifloriate rapture. It was she who was being celebrated on this ritual, and it was she due to this fact who needed to be most deeply pelted, nay, pulverized by magnificence! It was a magical ecstasy, shifting, because the poem sings, by means of the physique into a brand new habits.
I’m deeply moved by this poem and by sharing it with our DM readers this Easter and Passover Season, 2026. How deeply we want it! It brings again the magnificent knowledge and pleasure of our pedagogy on the College of Creation Spirituality which drew so many souls of numerous spiritual traditions as college and college students.
For me, it is sort of a music about our faculty and what was taking place there each day. And it blends the knowledge of Sister Jose Hobday and M.C. Richards. Additionally it is in some ways a music to the Christ message, to incarnation, to like, to the holiness and pleasure of matter. That is the form of imaginative and prescient that, because the poet informs us, ensures that the world needn’t ever be the identical.
* The poem may be present in M. C. Richards, Think about Inventing Yellow: New and Chosen Poems of M.C. Richards (Station Hill). I share it from the private copy she shared with me earlier than it was revealed.
To learn the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click on HERE.
Banner Picture: A postcard selling an artwork exhibition by M.C. Richards on the Chester Springs Studio in Pennsylvania. From Matthew Fox’s private assortment.
Queries for Contemplation
What does this poem imply to you?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Whee! We, wee all the best way Residence: Towards a Sensual, Prophetic Spirituality.
Confessions: The Making of a Put up-denominational Priest.
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul & Society.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient For a New Technology.
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Important Writings on Creation Spirituality.
