2011 - Talk Birth

and inspired to bring our gifts of love and service to the altar of humanity.
May we know once again that we are not isolated beings
but connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe,
to this community and to each other.
-Anonymous (Reading #434 in Singing The Living Tradition)
—-
Or (not sure of the source for this one, I had it jotted on a little piece of paper):
With the kindling of this flame,
We honor the mysteries and riddles that prompt us to ask questions;
We give thanks for community, in which we can seek their answers;
And we open our hearts and minds to our great and many freedoms.
—
Introductory Reading/Welcome
328
The Gaze of Love: A Body-Loving Invitation to all Women, by [2]Patricia Lynn Reilly
Today, and everyday, let’s turn toward other women’s bodies, and our own, with mercy and
unconditional acceptance, letting go of the competition and scrutiny-based sizing up of each other,
letting go of the subtle put-downs and diminishments when we’re threatened by each other, allowing
healing attention to flow one to another until the gaze of love heals us.
A gaze of love, calling wise women with their beautiful silver hair and life-lines out of hiding;
inviting our smart, gifted daughters to reject the tyranny of thinness and to cease from harming
themselves; welcoming the full, rounded bodies of our friends, bodies that refuse to be battered
into shape by diets and admonishments.
A gaze of love so powerful, so encompassing, embracing the whole community of women, all
sizes, shapes, colors, ages, and languages, with the widest welcome, the deepest affirmation, the
highest calling, the loudest YES.
A gaze of love, inspiring us to bite into LIFE and the fullness of its possibility, to express LIFE
through us in color and shape, sound and movement, to honor LIFE by turning our body-loving
energy toward projects of justice, relationships of comfort, strategies of wellness, and words of
affirmation.
Knowing we’re all in this together.
One breath. One body. One life. And so it is.