A Wintered Annointing

Some times one can see the months coming, exchanging old outfits for the new. January to February stays dedicated to winter's cloak without a hint of anything different. These weeks stretch beyond countable days and I find myself imagining the still distant cries of red-winged blackbirds. Feeling phantom rays of the closer sun does not, however, lead to t-shirts and bare feet. I still shiver my request for heat and light. To love me is build fires today, even though tomorrow's wood dwindles. Woodsmoke on the downdraft is to winter like hamburgers on the grill in the late setting sun are of summer. The truly grateful appreciate the context before them; Yet I think on garden cilantro and fireflies and night-swimming while the tomb of winter lies still. There is work to be done here. How I long for happily, happily.

Light and life must not quarrel. Behavior must match belief. Bridge metaphors catch my breath because as usual, my interior life does not just belong to me. We must arrive at the other side because the unbearable pull of the safer shore is splicing the wholeness I am beginning to remember.

He is busy today yet pokes at the fire to wish me warm and draw me closer. Love does not triangulate; we do. Instead, love bends all of life's tensions into a circular oneness - never losing sight of what always was.

I am so loved. Yet I am also bending, curving towards the very nature that saves us all.  The delay is excruciating and so one must ask, again: how?  How does one surrender unto that which refuses understanding? I pour these questions at your feet, offering my hair to dry our tears.  For I know you have always cried with me.