THE LOVE I WANT KNOWS LIFE IS WORTH IT

To venture forward in the flesh, in the task of becoming, in faith and creative expectation—this is our "spiritual" calling. (Lissa McCullough)

The telos of my prayer is to pursue conditions where I am brought to awe, where I arrive at the feet of God and He so simply resembles the ground of my being. I look up and choose to cry. I look up and choose to touch. There is no wrong way to embody the trace of me, there has never been.

Since I parted from girlhood, Venus has shown me only the gravity and grace of its petals. My identity is no longer terrifying, or built in secret. I exist in wild affection as water dances off the roof, with the sound of horses running loose in the meadow (Tom Hennen).

My access to breath is expansive, oiled by whiteness and God, primed for plurality (Sue Sinclair), a manifestation of lessons spent cradling the infant of me. Integration. It is something I can do all day long. Clearly, I try. Stamina can run you right over. And it did.

The more I sought a self that was not me, the less I resembled myself. There was no body that could transform me but me. Now in my form, skin that was bilaterally cut to the bone and substantiated by change, I see holiness.

I no longer desire what makes me vacant. I forgive my past. I do not beg at the door of love, abandoning paradise to the fantasy of martyrdom. Like Saturn, I have respect for all that has been diminished.

I may have been late to arrive, but now I am here.

Pushing against the edges of what it means to give ... I’m determined still to hold this open door even now as it devastates (Phil Elverum)

Who should I tell? The raft I am on, I made it out of linden wood, how it creaks with an uplifting immanence and sings in the key of the divine. It carries me as I behold my imprecision as proof of my life.