When I Was the Forest

When I Was the Forest 

When I was a stream

When I was the forest

When I was still the field

When I was every hoof, foot, fin and wing

When I was the sky itself,

No one ever asked me did I have a purpose,

No one ever wondered was there anything I might need,

For there was nothing I could not love,

It was when I left all that we once were that the agony began,

The fear and questions came

And I wept, and I wept, and tears I had never known before.

So I returned to the river

I returned to the mountains,

I asked for their hand in marriage again, I begged –

I begged to wed every object and creature,

And when they accepted, God was ever present in my arms,

And he did not say, “Where have you been?”

For then I knew my soul

Every Soul has always held Him

  – by Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) Christian Mystic