Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT July 21st 2025

26 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “GOD” by Campbell McGrath, posted below.

Our prompt was: “The body prefers...”

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Please join us for our next session Friday August 1st at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

GOD by Campbell McGrath

GOD
It makes sense notionally, a painless hypothesis
for our predicament, crayoned face to bridge
the gulf between grace and lightning storm.
But why should God be imagined as human—heavens,
dogs are nobler creatures, to say nothing of whales
or oak trees—and why as a man? Why should God
be gendered any more than potassium and gravity?
If a coconut falls on your head, you don't question its
sexuality. You curse, flail, you might even die,
poor donkey of the body tapping out, farewell.
Death doesn't scare the body because all the body wants
is to lie on the couch with a golf tournament on TV
but the mind is drip, drip, drip, drip, relentless.
It wants God to be more than a notion, it wants God
to be real so it can escape the hairy carcass
and rise—eternity seems always to be an ascension—
the mind wants to climb that ladder while the body 
prefers to bask in a confetti of chatter,
the mind wants to study the stars from the roof
and imagine an afterlife it understands 
deep down, in its python coils, to be nothing 
but a metaphor, a hunger for reassurance, a telescope
resolving the night into a zodiac of consolation.

Credit: Campbell McGrath
The New Yorker. June 30, 2025


26 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT July 21st 2025”

  1. Stef's avatar Stef

    The body prefers…

    How much more can I bleed?

    I don’t want to hurt.

    Yeah? Well, I’m tired of listening to you.

    I don’t want to see this world anymore.

    I don’t want to discuss politics!

    I don’t want to be still.

    I want to be still.

    I’m tired of you putting your other foot before me!

    I’m tired of feeling bloated.

    I’m tired of thinking about…all of it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Sometimes events and circumstances seem to cause us to explode. We’ve had enough; we just want to escape. I know that feeling. And that’s when I breathe deeply and close my eyes.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Stef,

      I don’t want to see this world anymore, how much more can I bleed, I don’t want to hurt.

      Is it time for the world to take a look in the mirror and be transformed into something that heals, that heals?

      Thank you.

      Andre

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. Trevor Hebert's avatar vibrantfreelyb4ce26f285

    The body prefers everything and nothing

    A perfect balance

    of both.

    Reading between the lines and seeing the signs and

    synchronicities all around me,

    I crave peace but thrive in chaos

    I choose love but I receive the hate

    Through the ether and physical, there’s nothing but truth.

    And hypocritical people deciding whether someone lives or dies by their rules.

    I find it hard to believe an ever loving God would not pause and think that where we need to deceive to see the truth, that we need to bleed to feel alive, that we need to thrive for more than ones who barely get by and survive

    To lie, steal and cheat their way through life in spite, not despite, the people we see derived from humble beginnings.

    Is this life a test or another tale old as time itself?

    With so many to choose, who’s to say any single one is right?

    The answers, we might never know. To show countless lives lost at the demise of men.

    Will these eyes ever see anything other than the God that is inside of me?

    Or just the ego with which we all share of the same name of:

    Homosapien.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Wow!

      Your speaker speaks for the body’s desires clearly. So many worldly elements oppose the body’s requests and those of the mind, and the heart. I find myself back in McGrath’s poem pondering the conundrum of GOD. Perhaps embracing the God within each of us, our common Humanity, might provide part of the answer. Thank you.

      Andre

      Like

      Reply
  3. michele348's avatar michele348

    What the body prefers~~~

    I want to have answers — explanations of why things happen the way they do.
    That’s probably unrealistic, since truth is so elusive.

    Why is it so darn hot and humid this summer?
    Why do wars in the world never seem to have endings, only beginnings?
    Why are there so many people who wander about totally lost, totally unloved?

    I prefer to have answers, and I can only attempt to seek and find them
    in my faith.

    The world leaves me dangling by my ankles,
    so, I look upward to the heavens for my survival rope.

    It dangles down to me, and I stretch for all I’m worth.

    Like

    Reply
    • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

      Michele, first of all- if you were dangling by your ankles, I would stand to catch you. Also, when you find out life’s answers, please share, especially when you find out what to do about the heat and humidity this summer😉.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Michele,

      The unrealistic expectations to expect answer pairs well with elusive truth. A sage speaker whose acclamation “I stretch for all I’m worth” speaks to the valor of the human condition, the instinct to stay alive and moreover, thrive.

      Thank you.

      Andre

      Like

      Reply
  4. rehavia6's avatar rehavia6

    The Body Prefers (In honor of Andrea Gibson)

    The body prefers

    To know what to anticipate

    To be prepared for whatever disease will strike

    But when the diagnosis is revealed

    Years of worry slip away

    It is maybe a relief

    Now we know what we are dealing with

    Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, 

    Death.

    Time to cherish every moment 

    Time to focus on what matters.

    Like

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Life plays a touch-and-go game with the unsuspecting. Unwelcomed visitors invade the body, ravaging its physicality, but not its spirit. And it is this spirit that will survive into eternity.

      Like

      Reply
      • rehavia6's avatar rehavia6

        We spend so much time worrying about what could go wrong that we do not appreciate what we have until something actually does go wrong.

        Like

    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Thank you for recognizing the loss of a wonderful poet and human being. Your speaker shifts the focus of a dreaded illness to a way to make life meaningful when the disease presents itself, putting the dis-ease to good work. The fear in illness is greatest, by far, before the diagnosis is reached. The human condition is such that it can become master of the illness even when not cured of it.

      Like

      Reply
  5. al3793's avatar al3793

    The body prefers…

    The breath of fresh crisp air upon stepping out the door.

    The warm feel of a ray of sunlight on the cheek as it chases away

    the nip of an early spring morning.

    The “sweet, sweet, sweet, you’re so sweet” sound

    of the yellow warbler beckoning for a mate.

    The rush that comes at mile six of an evening run

    the runner’s high…

    as cicadas chatter through the branches of the trees

    and crickets sing for real masking tinnitus

    and fireflies alight is such numbers

    that the eye can discern

    the deep green of the forest.

    Like

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      The senses are inundated by all that surrounds. What shall we see first, what do we hear? It is the wonder of life that keeps us putting one foot in front of the other each day that we are granted.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

      Andre, to be in nature as you describe is such a balm. Also, maybe my birds are singing to me “sweet, sweet, sweet” and not “tweet, tweet, tweet”😉.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  6. Catherine's avatar Catherine

    The body prefers–what the body prefers. Yes, sleep, smells, sights & sound. Perchance to dream. The body likes dreams so much that it shuts down its puppetry just for a night. Cuts the marionette strings of duty & lies back for the movie. And sometimes–even while awake–or is that the mind. Overtaking the body, wrestling it to the bed, running the Powerpoint, yelling lessons from yesterday and predictions for tomorrow. Oh, dancers! Yeats couldn’t separate you from the dance. So how can I?

    Like

    Reply
    • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

      Catherine, you have offered us so many interesting descriptions of the very active mind. It is amazing that the body has any energy left to function! I am exhausted just reading it.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Catherine, the dancers’ search for meaning can’t be stopped. The wonderful friendship of Morpheus, while separating us from things like, smells, sights and sounds that fuel us, it “cut’s the marionette strings” to let us rejuvenate and our minds go off in any and all directions it wants. The things dreams are made of…

      Andre

      Like

      Reply

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