"Bread for the Stardust Pilgrims"

This is the title poem in my third book of poems.  I have been thinking about the pilgrimage to Santiago for about 10 years, and this was published in 2009.  I got to read it in front of the Burgos cathedral, to Andy, my son, who was recording it, in May 2012.  It felt miraculous, and powerful to be using the words I had written to describe the pilgrimage we were actually doing!  We were not barefoot-- it was hard even with shoes, in places.  But the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos resonated completely with my poem, with my sense of the million years of holiness evolving us.  I have loved the work of Teilhard de Chardin since I first read it, and I was so lucky to be in the Seminar on Teilhard taught by Fr. Fagothey at Santa Clara, in the joy-filled autumn of his life, in the spring semester of my sophomore year.  Because of Teilhard, I was a philosophy major in college.  We had just walked a path which has been walked by humans for 10,000 years, near the archeological dig at Atapuerca.    I definitely felt the miraculous feeling that God holds us in hands which continue to create!  I am so grateful that my son is also excited and engaged in this sense of mystery, miracles, and the desire for coherence.   Walking this path with him has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.




BREAD FOR THE STARDUST PILGRIMS 

In the stillness of night

Holding the dandelion seeds
Of our own resurrection,
We are the stardust pilgrims: 
Oxygen, nitrogen,

Carbon and hydrogen, 
Kissed by sunlight,Remixed and reborn.

Flesh blossoming from the muddy earth, 
Barefoot on the journey,
Bones (sometimes weary) singing the truth: 
We are stardust,

We are pilgrims;
Calcium and amino acids,
Air and water.
This bread is ours,
Wheat from the fields,
Golden as grain in summer.
This wine, transforming us
As we walk along,
On the way to the wedding feast;
Hoping for miracles,
Laughing for joy.