Bakerwoman God, I am your living bread. Strong, brown Bakerwoman God, I am your low, soft and being-shaped loaf. I am your rising bread, well-kneaded by some divine and knotty pair of knuckles, by your warm earth hands. I am bread well-kneaded. Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God, put me in your own bright fire. I am warm, warm as you from fire. I am white and gold, soft and hard, brown and round. I am so warm from fire. Break me, Bakerwoman God. I am broken under your caring Word. Drop me in your special juice in pieces. Drop me in your blood. Drunken me in the great red flood. Self-giving chalice, swallow me. My skin shines in the divine wine. My face is cup-covered and I drown. I fall up, in a red pool in a gold world where your warm sunskin hand is there to catch and hold me. Bakerwoman God, remake me. -- Alla Renée Bozarth Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey, Paulist Press 1978, Luramedia/Wisdom House 1988 Moving to the Edge of the World, iUniverse 2000. This is My Body: Praying for Earth, Prayers from the Heart, iUniverse 2004. http://allabozarthwordsandimages.blogspot.com/