“You hold Life like a face, between your palms. A plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you. I will love you, again.”*
For one uncomplicated moment you forget to notice all of the hard angles, the heavy lids, the places where shadows cast an unflattering glare.
And you relax. Because Love has just entered your boudoir.
Reflecting back to you into the gaze of your looking glass, the simple beauty of your own True Face. In love with itself.
You catch ahold of something not seen until now.
That in the dance of your own attentiveness, throbs the heartbeat of Life.
As your witness. And your constant companion.
You notice how insistently you’d refused the truth.
By withholding recognition of your innocent loveliness.
Indulging instead, the virulent human proclivity to unleash the ravages of a critical eye.
Bartering away your precious life currency for endless self-improvement. In futile efforts to meet a desecrating standard. To cross the finish line set by your enemy.
You’d convinced yourself that it was in achieving this extravagance that would you be beautiful. And adored.
But an ideal is nothing but fantasy. Stunning from afar. Yet crumbling to dust the moment you bring it up close.
Less conspicuous, perhaps, is how often you feel tender, vulnerable and broken.
Not realizing that in every shattered moment is an artistry unimagined by anyone, but Love itself.
Because Life is just like a face. So utterly perfect in all of its uncultivated imperfection.
You are innocent of that for which you were never proclaimed guilty!
Life and Love are consorts, frolicking in the mystery. Their confidences, impenetrable.
Until that surprise split-second at the tail-end of a slow exhale when the impulse arises … to unfurl them.
Like the yawning stretch of a magnificent serpent, relaxing its long slender coils into the pleasure of an adoring caress.
Forever yours. Never to stray again.
“And God said, ‘Love your Enemy’, and I obeyed him and loved myself.”
Khalil Gibran
“You’re the one you’ve been waiting for.”
Byron Katie
*Ellen Bass