Last Thursday at our Great Heart Circle we had Steve Hart visiting from Leeds, who's been connected with sister groups in the North of England for several years. He led the relaxation/settling-in meditation we generally begin with, guiding us through the stages of "opening", "allowing" and "softening" with whatever arises in our experience.
As a theme for discussion, we explored Galway Kinnell's poem "St Francis and the Sow", followed by Silent Sitting meditation and a generous feast of shared food.
Saint Francis And The Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
