Reflexive Theology

Everything done to the human body is also
done to the body of god all that sweet sweet lovin’
and that loving burping and the caressing and wiping
and cleaning and healing and the slightest of kisses that convey
everything too dense for words. Everything done

to the human body is also done to the body
of god. Circumcision. Clitoridectomy. Vulva sewn shut
to protect male virtue. Bound feet, bound breasts, all that is female
bound tight and forbidden. Bodies bent double and tied tight
for hours upon hours. Bodies hung by the hands, by the feet, by the
neck to die, bodies burned, for god’s sake, burned alive, bodies
pierced with steel and stone and wood and bone and iron and bodies led
tied one to another, kidnapped, shackled, hauled off across an ocean, bodies starved
and raped in every way imagined and invented. Bodies shocked and
waterboarded and strangled and bit by dogs and locked in cages, exposed, alone
and thousands of miles from home. Bodies mutilated

in the name of god, in fear of god, in sacrifice to god. What would be left
of the body of god if god’s body was attacked as people attack the body
in god’s name? A single limb, a single hair, a single cell? Wherever our bodies

are not sacred, god’s body is not sacred. Wherever our bodies are attacked, god’s
body opens and bleeds and hates its own shape and bends to break and wounded
and weakened god’s body hears our cries but with limbs lost to land mines
and eyes lost in the chemical plant explosion and asbestos lungs god’s body
sits in the great chair of the sky and prays to no longer hear what
can no longer be fixed.

Reflexive Theology

Imagine if everything done in god’s name
to the human body was done in return
to god’s body. No penis tip. No clitoris. Vulva
sewn shut. Feet bound, feet beaten, body bent double
and tied tight, hung by the hands, by the feet, by the
neck to die, burned, for gods’ sake, burned alive,
pierced with steel with wood with iron with lead
kidnapped and shackled and hauled off across an ocean, starved
and raped repeatedly in every oracle. What then would be left of the body of god
if god was treated as people treat people in god’s name? A single limb,
a single hair, a single cell and can you image that whatever is left might
deem itself worthy of praise?

בשׂר וגוּף

It is one supposes, on some days, at some times, possible,
theologically speaking, to imagine a god who has
no body. God of Ideals. God of Spirit. God of Thought. God of
No Thing therefore God of Nothing. God, what a tragedy
that a human, all flesh and bone in her world of wood and
stone, water and earth, could be so disembodied herself
that she conceives a divinity without a body
without its creaks and hungers, without its desires and demons,
without taste buds, without a pulse to quicken
to pound visibly in the throat when the scent of the one she needs
overwhelms all sense. To love an idea can be quite quite satisfying
but only the body, beloved,
is holy, holy, holy.

Source Text
What is Holy
Nett Hart

What is holy to us is that which we apprehend by the senses, touch in its fleshly life; what is untouched, pristine, exists in idea only. The idea is not holy in the way its incarnation is. To be holy, something must exist in relationship: it must smell, prickle, moan.

Nett Hart from Spirited Lesbians: Lesbian Desire as Social Action

Conflagration

Fire proves that bodies
can be utterly
consumed
by motion all that
space between molecules
for heat to heat
until heat is all
there is and that is
how god’s body when
it first met a volcano
invented
samba.

In-inside

The question of what dwells inside
of inside goes on forever, for
nothing is full of only
nothing, for everything
is inside god’s body and god’s
body, inside
everything.

Source Text
שְׁמַת חַיַּי/ Morning Blessing Marcia Falk

Nishmat hayay t’vareykh v’kerev libi yashir נִשְׁמַת חַיַּי תְּבָרֵךּ וְקֶרֶב לִבִּי יָשִׁר:
Kol od n’shamah b’kirbi modah/modeh ani מוֹדָהּ\מוֹדֶה אֲנִי כָּל עוֹד נְשָׁמָה בְּקִרְבִּי

The soul of my life will bless, and the innermost part of my heart will sing.
As long as breath is in my innermost being, I give thanks.

On how we tend to the body of our beloved

For every prayer for hope god’s body sprouts a feather
for every prayer for vengeance, a wound from a feather plucked

Once and again every now and then on god’s body
there are feathers enough to fly

but mainly god’s body sinks and swells and
oozes puss while we cry out אָנָא אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָה