A Clearing

We who believed pain was wickedness: How wrong we have been.
Love and truth are the sharpest virtues.
They will tear your soul when you embrace them.
Embrace them.
Don't let go, though your blood runs steady down your sides.
You have not loved until you see it pooling red around your feet.
You have not been true until truth's sharp edges strike the bone.
Pain is not a curse.
It is a clearing in the woods.
God is there, and every human life surrounds it.

Contact

If you manage to reach out and make contact with a person, hold tight. You can’t wait to love them until you know whether they’re the type of person you love. You can’t ask yourself whether they deserve it. None of us deserves it. We are all petulant and stupid and impossible in all our varied ways. If a person touches you, none of that matters. You just grab their hand and love the hell out of them.

Heal

To keep a wound open

Intentionally

Not to nurse the pain

But to remember it

To respect it

Requires the strength to tear the scab -

To refuse to grow over it

But to prune yourself around it instead

Using it as a reservoir

To set your roots in.

If you have the strength to keep a wound open

The moss will grow on its banks

Before long. Eventually.

And your branches will spread above it

And throw sun-dappled shadows into its chasms.

A wound can be beautiful,

If you have the strength to tear the scab.

You are strong enough.

You are strong enough.

You are strong enough.