Note: If you want to comment on Ann’s poetry, I will copy and paste, just as you have written, into an email to her. Thank you. – Celia
From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:
Rustle of anticipation
decorum-tamed in sacred space
could not contain
eager excitement as
children-like they waited watching
crowding in habitual place
sharing seats with former strangers
expectation now uniting.
The moment came and on the face
of each one present glowed a radiance
felt within and seen without
igniting new communal flame
non-consuming yet hope-glowing
in the destined still-to-be.
Unseen aureoles now formed
around the crowd as well as him who spoke
in new yet old familiar tongue
each falling rapt upon the ear
of all who in the hearing heard
the rush of holy breath and knew that
they were born again commensally.
Born of and with and then into
the Spirit of the One whose
once-begotten Spirit we all are.