Walk Naked       

Walk naked 'round the slumbering lake;

feel the breeze dress you in cooling silk;

the sun warms the pores of your welcoming flesh;

lay in grass like the bee seeking nectar;

roll in chlorophyll greening the soles of your feet;

whistle as if whittling a spirit on the air;

sing like a bird flirting with the neighbor's goose;

let your lungs open to freshness

like a babe born to new Earth;

be the womb receiving the Sperm of God

rejoicing at the graced-life of your soul;

plunge deep into the water's darkness
deep into its subterranean holds;

meet her fish and watered life abundant;

speak her tongue with the creatures dwelling there;

laugh midst the chatter of the bubbly voices

that their scales feel the sensations

of your humorous, tangential flesh;

arise from the deep

embracing the rolling sea

skipping like a chipmunk 

hoarding seeds for a meal.

Ah, body, my body! 

great gift to wondrous me 

I taste your freedom in this precious moment

I embrace the newness alive in me.

*Throughout the world, whenever a group of people has not had the option of moving to search for something better, there have been aspects of the landscape to which they have pinned their sense of self, and of community.  Many of these have become  known as sacred places because of their importance in the culture, which often leads to their being incorporated in various religious traditions; but the relationship between self and place is essentially secular and so simple that we often overlook it.

-Ron Matous

*As the world shrinks and we become more mobile, the first casualty of our lifestyle is the sense of belonging to a place. ...When one's connection to the land is represented by a title deed rather than memories, the connection is tenuous at best.

-Ron Matous

*...all attachment is mad; but surely if one is going to be attached to life itself one cannot help but be attached to the place where it occurs.

-Ron Matous