Heed the Call

Essential in pandemics, the woods call—
Come to us, unmasked and alone.
You who are weary of breathing your own stale words,
Come into our silence that transforms gasps into spirit.

Come close and walk softly on our hallowed ground,
Rediscovering the holiness of dirt.
Walk where honeysuckle incense whispers joy
And choir birds sing to quiet your internal ranting.

Come dwell here when the congregations shutter,
And all the world shelters in but carries on.
Find your way beneath old legacy oaks
Telling their tales of offering refuge.

Come weep beneath the hickory leaves,
Shimmering in a canopy when troubles press in.
Their sunlit dance will lift your eyes to the heavens
Where dreams of sweeter times are born.

Come be disconnected among sassafras sprouts
And receive a reprieve from daily counts of disease.
Feel the paw paws dare you to utter words like
Optimistic and joy without feeling ridiculous.

Come lie beneath a tulip poplar mast,
With billowing flowered bells that carry daydreams.
Wander in the gift of whim and fantasy
That awakens the spirit of peace.

Come smell cedar’s aromatic memory
Filling you with delight beyond your intellect.
Sweet as ironweed dancing with walnut trees
Just because the wind blows.

Come fall on your knees when you cannot contain
The beauty of bluebells blooming near a spotted fawn,
And give thanks for the essential woods
That have healed us again.


-- The Rev. Becca Stevens, posted on Facebook Oct. 26, 2020

Sanctuary

Before the sun rose
Or an altar was hewn
Before the crocus bloomed
Or a winter passed

Before the birds sang
Or the seas parted
Before a word was spoken
Or an apple bitten

Before the wine was blessed
Or a cross lifted
Before the path was chosen
Or a prayer offered

There was sanctuary.


--The Rev. Becca Stevens

In the Valley of Death

With arms outstretched on the hill

An American chestnut tree stands resureected.

Silently she draws new life from an old, dead stump

Where her ancestors died with blighted roots a hundred years ago.

She bears witness to the graves lying stoneless in her valley.

The sunken earth is the only marker

For brothers and sisters enslaved, laid too shallow.

The woodland cemetery is adorned with vine wreathes

Among pawpaws and May apples that keep wake.

People lay down and wept here in the shadow of death.

The rising Chestnut holds this broken history in her belly.

On this sacred ground an owl flies at half-mast and calls out,

"We cannot kill what God calls very good."

Nothing is forsaken since love seeps through

Shallow graves and dead stumps.

We weep for blights and injustices,

But even if we hung up our lyre,

The bluebirds and yellowbellied sapsuckers

Sing for the weary, "There is love after death."

-- The Rev. Becca Stevens, from Love Heals (p. 98), 2017