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Friend, go to the window. Open the door.
Move away from the screen, pocket your phone.
For just a moment, sometime today,
let this November air mess with your hair,
caress your crumpled, tear-streaked face, kiss your bare hands,
as it has since you were small, as it will as you grow old.
All is not lost.
Go to the window. Open the door.
If you can’t,
if you’re sick, or in jail, or at work with no break,
if you’re stuck in an airport or riding a train,
or in labor right now,
if your body can’t move to the window or door,
just imagine you can smell the rain, taste the wind,
the body and breath of the beautiful world.
Close your eyes.
Breathe deep, drink deep, the nourishing, life-giving air
and let it be Spirit inside you.
Breathe in life, and breathe out again, life. Breathe more.
This is your life,
and our life together, you and I, and
all the beloveds at risk now as never before,
humans and trees, rivers and land, animals,
children and birds.
Breathe in love for them, breathe in love for us all.
Protection. Resolve.
And when you’re able, when you’re ready, whenever you can,
breathe out a prayer of hope.
This may take a while.
We may have to hold our breath a long while,
gulping in air as if we were desperate, which today, my friend,
we are.
Breathe in rage and fear and fury, bone-weariness, grief, panic, disgust.
Breathe out a whisper, a sliver, a shiver, a single frail molecule
of hope, to be carried like milkweed
God only knows where.
You know this and must not forget:
still and always we are held within, and we comprise a larger Love.
We are held within, and we comprise
the mighty, irrefutable persistence and resistance of our ancestors,
and the urgent, laughing beauty of our children.
We are held within, and we comprise holy and ferocious power.
Spirit/breath moves through us still, inspiring, insisting:
any act of love we undertake henceforth will be a revolution.
Open your window. Go to the door.
Reach for a neighbor, even a stranger. Now I believe, as I didn’t before, that you could knock on almost any door, tremble on the threshold, and when they open, collapse in their arms.
They’ll hold you, you’ll hold them, weeping, fists pounding,
amazed at your brazen audacity,
a little embarrassed but mostly emboldened.
What on earth is left for us to lose?
Take a breath, taste the wind, drink the rain,
this feast prepared anew each day.
Remember who you are, and whose,
the beloveds and Beloved who know you by your name,
who expect great things of you,
which is to say, that you will keep on keeping on,
never alone,
and with all your dignity still shining.
Breathe deep, and notice now who’s hurting, who now is in danger,
who needs your prayers of hope (and more than that, way more)
in order to survive.
Hold out your brave and loving hands, stronger than you know,
your brave and beating heart,
and do not, under any circumstances,
let go of beauty and truth.
Do not let go of faith and hope and love.
We are held within, and we comprise a holiness
no tyrant can diminish or demean.