BLOG ENTRY: 3/16/2017

Sunday, March 12, 2017, we worked together in our community garden. While there was not much preaching last Sunday, I did have a few people ask me about the meditation reading.

A few weeks previous, I attended a lunch chapel service at Phillips Theological Seminary. Prof. Melinda McGarrah Sharp opened the meeting by asking the congregation to "reflect on what the ground beneath our feet has witnessed." It was a good way to begin our service that Tuesday.
Prof. McGarrah Sharp attributed this meditation to lectures and services led by Prof. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Prof. Dunbar-Ortiz is an international feminist, revolutionary, and historian from central Oklahoma.
Before sharing the meditation that I wrote, I thought it appropriate to thank those who inspired the concept and first line of the meditation. Thank you, both.

Reflect
by Andy Jacobs
Reflect upon the ground beneath your feet ...
... the many feet before your own that have crushed this grass ...
... the small children's feet, bare and muddied, skipping and running in play ...
... awkward teen feet, toes curling, heals digging into the earth ...
... adults of all ages, in tennis shoes, cowboy boots, moccasins, or bare feet, toiling for families dragged, driven or pulled here for this dirt ...
...this dirt, rich with roots of wheat and corn and alfalfa and maize and pecan and buffalo grass and sage and red bud and wild rose ...
... reflect on all the tiny lives that live and die beneath our toes, here, enriching the soil, fertile for life's consumption ...
... remember this spot right here was once not an address, in a town, in a state, in this country ...
... before our feet, this place was trampled beneath a million bison hooves, a thousand rabbit paws, hundreds of snake bellies and horned toad claws, billions of birds between flights ...
... beneath our toes blood has spilled, babes been born, families passed in joy and sorrow to the spirits whose bones had turned to dust before their grandmothers were quick with new life ...
... this earth that pulls us close has pulled down mountains into this plain, pulled down dinosaurs, and hairy rhinos, mastodons and saber-toothed tigers, giant bears and Neanderthals, pulled them down into its fertile depths ...
... this earth beneath us was once just stardust screaming through the universe, reacting with equal and opposite reaction, randomly bumping and joining and splitting and growing in complexity until it became a part of this moment, here, shared with you, another body made of stardust, filled with fertile life, consuming the broken and dead in a cycle to go on living, miraculously, here in this place with these people ...

... reflect on the ground beneath your feet ...