And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
What is the poem we give to this world? Can it be that it is simply our existence? Our spirit enters the world in the form of whatever way we are en-fleshed. Through our flesh, we take, but we also give to others.
Whether our life becomes a great poem or not may depend on the life choices we make. Or it may depend, also, on circumstance. Walt Whitman did, of course, write poems to the world through his lifelong writing of Leaves of Grass. But, he was a poem all by himself, even if he had written nothing. Look at the man. Consider his eyes and the way they gaze at us over through the ages.
What we know about our life is that we exist. What we know is that we try our best to help when we can. This is the poem of the caregiver: to reach out to meet the need of another. Every time that happens, a poem is written. Every time that happens, God's Love has come into the world through us.
Our "very flesh", no matter its form, becomes some kind of poem, some kind of expression of God in the world. And that is something to celebrate.
Take a look at yourself. You are a poem. You are work of art. You are a human drama. And you are a gift from God.
What does your life, as a caregiver, mean to you? How does your life as a caregiver express itself as poetry?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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