It’s mid-morning. I climb to the middle of a tropical mountain, one steeped in mist and mystery down an overgrown trail of elephant ears, through wild ginger, monstera, and bird of paradise. I press through this foliage, trust the softness of the soil, follow the music of nature to the Holy of Holies. The Medicine Man, Jesus, meets me here, leather pouch slung over his shoulder He’s excited, playful, serious, kind, falling in step right beside me. I wonder where we’re going? “Some-place new today,” he tells me with a grin. Indeed, I would follow this Jesus anywhere. I trail him through dense, fragrant foliage, every inch of my feet sinking deliciously into the soft dirt and roots of towering trees tangoing vines While the worship of water rings in my ears. We come to a clearing where a mystical sea-blue pool of water is sparkling in the sunlight, fed by the gentle roar of a waterfall cascading down a cavernous, valley wall. “Living water,” Jesus says like it exists for the first time and is where it is purely from its origin and headwaters (1) the water cycle itself the source of living waters anywhere and from here everything else finds its life. (2) I peer into the Swirling depths, note the varied fishes swimming in circles and loops infinitely fed and laughing. Crystal Spring Gibbins in her poem titled “Credo,” Says, “I believe in the lake, rolling us back into the drift toward an island we knew ourselves bound for.” (3) I know I am bound for this, and a smile spreads from my lips I look at Jesus He nods his head, then I join them, the fish, springing into the depths plunging my head beneath the surface to dance with the Spirit that is within all things, (4) to be baptized into the water that is life, forge relationship within its heavenly reality Make a covenant to know it in every sphere of my earthly living, for “life begets more life” (5) Like Jesus, immersed in the flow of the Jordan River, I am one now with heavenly places (6) for “where water flows swarms of living things are” (7) and without them the body of earth withers away. A woman needs belief in her wellness to flourish. They say in the beginning Spirit hovered over the waters (8) Took a look at the lake and made it flow, She hovered, managed to multiply to speak mountains from the waves and fruit from the tides. Spirit hovered and felt, grew and imagined this wonderful playground of God and the created. A woman needs belief in her wellness to flourish. She said, “God, come and see what we could make There’s more here than chaos There’s energy vibrant Musical like me We can make more I think with the water that’s here A lake where years turn into moments of being These moments like food These moments like faith The power of knowing there’s More than meets the eye like us, we’re more Than the angels even know We don’t have eyes Just many many hearts.” Underwater, my heart expands with the knowledge I belong and the wisdom bound up in earth’s body teaches me in song— her wetness brings a word of witness, For “words of wisdom,” as King David tells us, “are like a fresh, flowing brook– Like deep waters that spring forth from within, bubbling up inside the one with understanding.” (9) A woman needs belief in her wellness to flourish. We protect what we love, And we’ve lost our first connection (10) Yes, it’s time to reconvene with the ground beneath our feet, Press our ears to the dirt open our hearts and feel the beat of all the grief earth has to release, listen Echoes of ancient sorrows tear through the geological layers like misty whispers dripping from the blades of her hair She’s been waiting out humanity since the beginning of time, absorbing the storms of each heart full of lies— in violent eruptions of volcanoes and wildfires whirling screams of hurricanes the death toll climbing higher— If we listen closely Mother Earth (11) will tell us why she cries (12) A woman needs belief in her wellness to flourish. If beauty reflects the Creator then friend, we’ve been marring the face of God with our careless consumption of things at the expense of earth’s wellness, Her PTSD goes undiagnosed no longer. The body of earth we’ve made a means to an end– making ourselves the superior subjects in God’s grand narrative, we “think,” therefore we own (13) and as greed has consumed the bodies of women so then has it consumed the earth–- a playground for pleasure Disposable, short-lived A momentary endeavor in servitude to the whims of humankind not acting like God, their awe was blinded into hunger for possession something Jesus tells us over and over we are to let go of. (14) Leave it to the poets to know God is a bed of flowers (15) Leave it to the poets to believe conversation with the deer, dirt, rivers, and trees could manifest transfigured ecology. (16) I emerge from the depths of this sacred living water caught up in the dialogue of the wind with bamboo forests, I grab the firm hand of Jesus and the soft solidarity of the ground, hear the music of the cosmos whispering “I have always been here,” and I feel so small like the dust beneath God’s feet, when a voice like many waters (17) hovers over me, ferocious and kind, All-seeing and all powerful but not the domineering kind all powerful in that life can't help but happen when this voice speaks: Spirit of the Living God Fall afresh on me Spirit of the Living God Fall afresh on me Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me, Spirit of the Living God Fall afresh on me (18) for “life begets more life,” this voice rumbles like thunder “go and do likewise” and I look up like Marie Howe’s Moses (19) at this wild ordination and arrest my deliverance from the height of the mountain where holiness and happiness spills from the hilltops. (20) Leave it to the poets to release heaven through song like faith sprouting up into trees clapping hands (21) A woman needs belief in her wellness to flourish; so let's bring the cure of Good News with the imprint of our feet.
Kelsi Folsom is a poet and classically trained singer living in Ohio with her family. She is the author of three poetry collections and is published in Ekstasis, Motherscope, Anabaptist World, and elsewhere.
John 4:10, “…If you only knew who I am and the gift that God wants to give you, you’d ask me for a drink, and I would give you living water.” (TPT)
Ezekiel 47:9 “…so where the river flows everything will live.” (NIV)
Crystal Spring Gibbins, “Credo,” from Now/Here (MN: Holy Cow! Press, 2017).
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, “The Spirit as Moral-Spiritual Power for Earth-Honoring, Justice-Seeking Ways of Shaping Our Life in Common” from Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, edited by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017) 258.
Judith D. Schwartz, The Reindeer Chronicles: and Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020) 61.
Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2021) 58-59.
Ezekiel 47: 9 “Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows…” (NIV)
Genesis 1:2, “…darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (NIV).
Proverbs 18:4 (ESV)
Revelation 2:4, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first” (NIV).
Melanie L. Harris, “Ecowomanist Wisdom: Encountering Earth and Spirit” from Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, edited by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017) 245.
Kelsi Folsom, “Rift,” from Breaking the Jar: Poems (Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2022).
Sallie McFague, “Reimagining the Triune God for a Time of Global Climate Change” from Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, edited by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017) 104.
Kelsi Folsom, “Possession,” from Breaking the Jar: Poems (Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2022).
Proverbs 18:10, “The character of God is a bed of flowers for the lovers of God delight to run into his heart and be exalted on high.” (TPT)
Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2021) 90.
Revelation 14:2, “And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder…” (KJV)
Daniel Iverson, 1926. https://hymnary.org/text/spirit_of_the_living_god_fall_iverson
Marie Howe, “The Mountain,” from The Good Thief (New York, NY: Persea Books, 1988) 8.
Psalm 98:8, “Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together.” (ESV)
Isaiah 55:12 “…the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (ESV)