Back in the days of our innocent youth
With Christmas a strict institution
The story was shared as indelible truth
Enough to suppress evolution

Remember the Wise Men who travelled
To witness the birth of the King
But mythology slowly unraveled
Replaced by some bells on a string

Remember the days of the shepherds
When angels and elders conspired
When prophets laid hands on the lepers
But lately so few are inspired

Back in the days of the loaves and the fishes
A rabbi gave sight to the blind
He’s not what we’d label ambitious
But he suffered as he was designed

Back in the times of the Goddess
The giver of life and of grains
We honor the cycles she taught us
Those patterns survive in our brains

Remember there’s seasons for living
To harvest and seasons to sow
For death and for birth and thanksgiving
Just a handful of stages to know

'writing's like mass -
God gets mad if you don't show up.'

- earnest hemingway

Worship.
as in all things holy, pure, and sacred
below the sun
among the trees
and rustling leaves.
Interconnected.

Worship.
as in the sound of waterfalls
and rivers
touching boulders and moss
of sunlight cascading.
Interconnected.

Worship.
as in bluebird skies
and vast spaces
red, yellow, orange, and green leaves
feeling the crisp breeze.
Interconnected.

Worship.
as in standing on a huge boulder
trusting gravity and my own two feet
looking out and down and around
feeling alive.
Interconnected.

Worship.
as in hugging
the trunk of a grandiose tree
as in the roots planted deep
teaching me important things.
Interconnected.

Worship.
as in there's no separation
between the 5 elements
and moon phases and Love
through all living Beings and Me.
Interconnected.

I’ve read the words that
Made the world.
I’ve sang the psalms
That praised them.

Strung out lyric
Belted from infantile lips
Ever ignorant,
Ever innocent,
Of the abhorrent things
Done under
ritual, devotion,
& bliss

I don’t like people at my feet
So, I could never be an emperor, or a king
Though I believe myself capable
Of just about anything
But loving – that’s a tricky one.
How does one go beyond –
I wonder – to be overcome
With wonderment of another
Find salt – beneath a fingernail –
Of the Earth’s splendour
Licking them clean, one by one,
Until there are none left to surrender
To me, it is beautiful but immodest
To bear one’s soul so unabashedly
So bare-naked, weak and honest
That you throw off one’s shoes
Trade them for an embrace and warm breath
Old vestments, at the foot of the bed
And at mine, just you.

He gave us free will
and made obedience the key to his kingdom.
Offered unconditional love
with a caveat of repentance
Trust in his plan
is why your prayers go unanswered
Asked that you bear the guilt
for a martyred son he had forsaken
Using our free will
to chase the love of an abandoner
Naming faith an act of love
  in the absence of reciprocity
His act of love, to give us life
robbing worship from our mothers.

This love is the universe reflected in your tears – universal smiles
we’d savour beneath the sheets; you offered a fragment of your
soul, while I surrendered a piece of me. Even in your absence,
you haunt me in my quiet dreams – how do I even try to sleep,
without you lying next to me?

A belief in the silent secrets carried in your breath, lying to me;
an elephant in the room; so hard to forget all the space it takes
thinking about you. My gaze is drawn to you – I am merely a
pencil sketching on your body’s canvas. Filling my mind with
oceans, drowning me in your skin- departing too quickly, I start
to feel so blue.

I loathe to confess just how deeply I worship you. Such a false
goddess; still I find myself resting down these offerings of my
heart, to lift you highly.

Though you are not a deity,
each step that you take here
becomes sacred to me.
Your path leaves trails of light
and my heart bows at your feet.

©️Lizzie Bevis

Can this be how I worship?
Not through song, but word?
Is it still worship?