Sacraments in Our Hair

Yesterday morning, I made this Facebook post:

"With bread dough in my hair*, I'm headed to church to offer drive through communion. If you're in SE Florida, come on by! (Trinity Lutheran, corner of Pines and 72nd, across from Broward College.

*yes, literal bread dough--I've been baking and the morning has zoomed ahead of me--the sacraments don't need me to take another shower, and I like the symbolism of bread dough in my hair, sacraments in my hand.

I've been baking bread for personal use, not for communion. No one need worry about finding my hair in their sacrament."

I spent the rest of the day thinking about these images--bread dough, sacrament, the way that sacrament becomes flesh, flesh becomes sacrament, sacrament becomes indwelling presence, indwelling presence becomes sacred, sacred becomes word, word becomes flesh, round and round and round.

I was also thinking about a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, but I couldn't remember the name of it or much about it, except for one line about having stars in our hair.  I first encountered that poem in a workshop at a conference in a South Carolina state park, a conference on bringing international/global elements to first year classes.  I loved this poem, and for about a year, I took it with me everywhere I went.  I wrote poems in response to it.

And now, I might again.

This morning I decided I wanted to read the original, and I did some Google searching.  There are many more Tsvataeva poems than one could once find.  But I couldn't find that one.  One search led me to another search, and I began to remember the other line, about avoiding, evading, or escaping death, and finally, I got to the correct poem.  

Some readers may already know that I was Googling the wrong line and the wrong image, but the correct author name, which led me to some interesting places, and I began to despair of ever finding the poem.

Now that I have found it, let me paste it here.  And let my poet theologian brain keep thinking about stars in our hair and bread dough in our hair and the meaning of sacrament.

We shall not escape Hell


by Marina Tsvetaeva

We shall not escape Hell, my passionate
sisters, we shall drink black resins––
we who sang our praises to the Lord
with every one of our sinews, even the finest,

we did not lean over cradles or
spinning wheels at night, and now we are
carried off by an unsteady boat
under the skirts of a sleeveless cloak,

we dressed every morning in
fine Chinese silk, and we would
sing our paradisal songs at
the fire of the robbers’camp,

slovenly needlewomen, (all
our sewing came apart), dancers,
players upon pipes: we have been
the queens of the whole world!

first scarcely covered by rags,
then with constellations in our hair, in
gaol and at feasts we have
bartered away heaven,

in starry nights, in the apple
orchards of Paradise
––Gentle girls, my beloved sisters,
we shall certainly find ourselves in Hell!