The story of a saint is always a love story. It is a story of a God who loves, and of the beloved who learns how to reciprocate and share that "harsh and dreadful love". It is a story that includes misunderstanding, deception, betrayal, concealment, reversal, and revelation of character. It is, if the saints are to be trusted, our story. But to be a saint is not to be a solitary lover. It is to enter into deeper community with everyone and everything that exists.
I want a new ritual for when we meet each other—
strangers or beloveds, friends or rivals, elders or children.
It begins by holding each other's eyes
the way we behold sunrises or the first cherry blooms,
which is to say we assume we'll find beauty there.
And perhaps some display of open hands—
a gesture with palms up—that suggests both
I offer myself to you and I receive you.
There should be a quiet moment in which
we hear each other breathe—
knowing it's the sound of the ocean inside us.
If there are words at all, let them be formed
mostly of vowels so they're heard more as song
than as spitting, more like river current and less
like throwing stones, words that mean something like
I do not know what you carry, but in this moment
I will help you carry it. Or something like,
Everything depends on us treating each other well.
And if we said it enough, perhaps we'd believe it,
and if we believed it enough, perhaps we'd live it,
treating every other human like someone
who holds our very existence in their hands,
like someone whose life has been given us to serve,
even if it's only to walk together safely down the street,
hold a door, pass the salt, share a sunset,
offer a smile, and say with our actions you belong.