I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Abbey Program Coordinator Melinda Thomas’s reflection on her new book Elements of Being: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse.

The poems started out of necessity. I wanted to write and had a story to tell but very little time. While I could not sustain the energy needed to write a prose novel, I could write poetry. Inspired by Nikita Gill’s The Girl and the Goddess, the project began as fiction in verse but quickly evolved into a spiritual memoir blending imaginal elements with true events.

Characters in the personified voices of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire emerged and began conversing with first person poems crafted under the persona Ivy. The narrative moves like seasons through the ache of a miscarriage, the fierce bloom of pregnancy, the primal truth of birth, and the weight of postpartum depression. They hold the sweetness of my child’s laugh, the pulse of landscape, and the expansive spiral of spirit. Rooted in the sacred rhythms of the earth, the poems embrace struggle, sorrow, and joy as vital threads in the fabric of wholeness.

In the process of writing I touched a deeper place of compassion. I wrote for mothers mired in postpartum depression. I wrote for my son to know he is loved. I wrote with the earth, listening in a new way. Journeys of sacred imagination drew me close to an inner council of archetypes who shared healing wisdom.

The fruit is Elements of Being: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse now available on Amazon in paperback and as an e-book! In the coming weeks it will also be available on Bookshop.org and other independent distributors. 

I am of the firm belief that books show up in our lives just when we need them. My fervent prayer is that this collection finds the hearts of those who need it. 

If you enjoy Elements of Being, please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you purchase and enjoy the printed book, pass it on by placing a copy in one of those free “little libraries” in your town.

Today I offer you a glimpse into the various parts of the narrative.

Prologue: Proximate

Feel water as the tides
of your body and fire
rising in your blood.
Sit on this rock for
one breath more

until you know the truth
of non-duality. There is
no overhead, off-planet God.
Only the pulse of Life. Of Love.

Anyone can be a mystic
and we are here
begging you to notice.

From Part I: Sacraments

Ivy: Touch of Light 1

I never thought my love language
was touch until you came along
and flooded my body with
oxytocin and I learned that
chemistry and mystery can
be one and the same.

You have been alive (alive!) for
six days that feel like an eternity
because how is it possible that
you didn’t exist until now?

Until this moment when I
am lying on the couch and
you are asleep on my belly,
tiny legs framing my torso
as your diaper peeks
out the sides of your onesie.

Every cell of me matches
your shimmering vibration
of love that is so pure I can only
breathe and savor this feeling,
imprint it as a memory, a message
we will share so that one day
when you are quite grown and wonder
if you are loved, beneath
the question and the aching doubt
your body will know, will reach down
to the depths of you and
remember the answer is yes.

Water: Reclamation

Sitting there in the cushioned rocker
bought just for this purpose,
Ivy wonders, can he taste the salinity of her tears?
Tears so effusive it’s as though the Sea herself were crying?
Does he know that soon he will no longer be offered this particular sacrament?

In a few days Ivy will wean him from her breast.
It has to be done.
In order to survive Ivy must saturate her blood and her milk with drugs necessary to quelch the chemical fire in her brain.

Through this act she will reclaim
her body and mind as her own.

Sometimes love looks like the receding tide.

From Part II: Land Magic

Ivy: Hunger

What is a woman to do
when she is a bright growling hunger
to dwell where mountains bow
to grass swept headlands which
run out to the sea then drop
down sharp and urgent into waves
that do not wait for rock bodies and
glowing women bound by love
and four walls and a garden
peopled with bees and butterflies
and rabbits that nibble the lettuce
while inside she sleeps and dreams there
is no roof, no separation between her
bones and the stars as the waves
beat rock and continue their chant
Come. Come. Home.

Melinda Emily Thomas is the Program Coordinator for Abbey of the Arts. She is an author, poet, yoga practitioner, and artist writing at the intersection of earth-cherishing contemplative spirituality, mental health, and soul care. Her first book, Sacred Balance: Aligning Body and Spirit Through Yoga and the Benedictine Way, was named a 2020 Best Spiritual Book by Spirituality & Practice. Her latest book Elements of Being: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse is available on Amazon. Melinda lives in North Carolina with her son and their cat, writes The Journal of Elements and Seasons on Substack, and always has flowers on the kitchen table. Her website is MelindaEmilyThomas.com.

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