In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Kabir entitled “The Temple of the Lord.”  I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.

The Story of the Body

 As the pupil is within the eye itself,
So is the Lord within thy body;
But fools know not this simple fact,
And search for him elsewhere.

As air pervades all space,
But none can see it,
So does the Lord pervade the body;
But He remains to each one unrevealed,
Since the lodestone of the heart is not attached to Him.
—Kabir

Beloved: Student of the Body, what are we made of?

Beloved: Student of the Body, speak. Tell us what you know to be true.

Student: My beloved, listen with the ears of love and I will tell you what I know.

Beloved: Oh yes, we will listen with the ears of love and with hearts of longing. Speak.

Student: My beloved, there are air, water, fire, and earth, elements of the divine. And they love to speak as you love to listen. They love to tell the story of the body, which is a long story, but as you love to listen, I will be their vessel and let them speak through me.

Beloved: Vessel of the Divine, O how we long to hear that story.

Student: Once upon a time there was chaos. Air, water, fire, and earth danced in the cosmos. They danced in every direction, but “dance” is not the perfect word, for it implies order, and there was no order, no pattern, no steps, no music. And that was not a bad thing.

The divine delighted in the chaos that was its body. It loved the twisting and turning and spattering and meeting and bouncing and melding and kissing and colliding. It loved the constant movement which was the only indication of time. It loved the air, the water, the fire, the earth and admired their capacity for change.

“How I love myself and my body of elements!” the divine said. And as the divine loved its body, the elements loved themselves and each other.

“You are so wondrous!” the divine said to the elements. “Nothing could be more wonderful than the ways you change, progress, unfold. Be what you want to be. Do what you want to do!”

And earth said to the other elements, “It is time for something new. As we are the body of the divine, so can we divide and combine into other bodies. Let us arrange ourselves in an orderly fashion.”

And the air said to the other elements, “What is the distance between us? What is the space we play in? There is something I can’t completely fill.”

Fire said, “It’s  the void. Let’s use it to give ourselves shape!”

“Yes,” said the water, “But let’s do more than that. Let’s give shape to each other.”

And then the elements did something surprising. They shrank. They shrank from each other. They sorted themselves out from each other. And they said, “Let’s see what we can do!”

The fire said, “I will divide into stars grouped into galaxies spread out throughout the void.”

The earth said, “I will divide into planets and moons and asteroids that circle the stars.”

The water said, “I will divide into oceans and lakes and ponds that lie on the earth.”

The air said, “I will divide into pockets of atmosphere that surround some of the planets.”

And they all did as they said and sang happy songs and did a happy dance.

And the divine said, “You are so beautiful, my body of elements! What will you do next?”

And earth said, “We need living things to grow on the planets.”

The water said, “Let’s make plants to soak in the light of the fire and root in the earth and drink the water and breathe the air!”

And air said, “Let’s make birds to soak in the light of the fire and walk on the earth and drink the water and fly through the air!”

And fire said, “Let’s make mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects to soak in the light of the fire and walk on the earth and drink the water and breathe the air! Let’s make fish that breathe water and swim in the water and eat the plants and insects!”

And they all did as they said and sang happy songs and did a happy dance.

And the divine said, “What beautiful bodies you have made of my body! What will you do next?”

And the earth said, “We need an animal that thinks like the divine.”

And water said, “We need an animal that creates like the divine.”

And air said, “We need an animal that loves like the divine.”

And fire said, “We need an animal that knows the divine.”

So they created the human race. They gave us bodies firm as the earth, flooded with water, intimate with air, with fire in our hearts. They gave us minds that think like the divine and hands that create like the divine and hearts that love like the divine and souls that know the divine.

“These bodies are my body,” said the earth.

“These bodies are my body,” said the water.

“These bodies are my body,” said the air.

“These bodies are my body,” said the fire.

“Ah hah,” said the divine, “You have given me more bodies to know myself! Such beauty! Such order! What will you do next?”

“There’s something missing,” the elements said. “It’s chaos.”

And the elements gave the human race chaos and order to play with along with pieces of themselves.

“That’s perfect,” said the divine. “What will you do next?”

“We will watch the human race create,” they said.

And the human race creates chaos and order out of earth, air, fire, and water. And as we grow and mature we realize that we are more than the body; we are the divine.

Beloved: Student of the Body, we did not know that you were Student of the Divine. But now we know the body is divine.

Student: Hallelujah! You know the secret. Now the elements are satisfied.