the temple of the other.

It happens in a moment, standing with the back door wide open, and the cool is creeping in, and he’s just washed the crock pot.  We’re standing in our kitchen, both of us in socks, in dim light.  I love the shape of his face so hard that the simple fact of it sits and sings on my shoulder, while in the foreground, I stand before him, talking with my whole body.  His eyes are alight with loving me, and there is a smile somewhere on his face, but not on his mouth.  I can feel the Universe circling her arms around us, whispering, Yes.

There is a danger in this kind of vulnerability: in the honesty that takes eons to be found, like a decoding of hieroglyphics, a language of symbols, of meaning and feeling and a timeless duty to be itself.  It’s a truthfulness that risks almost everything, a kind of eyes-open seeing the world that is often without its tenderness, but that, in this moment, has suddenly flown like a bird between us.  A dove.  A peaceful recognition.  A wave of crystal clear and blue and right magnanimity that joins us in our work to be present, to be whole, to be the guardians of the other’s inability to be anything but the thing that is standing before us, open.

But we have to get here, don’t we?  To the place where we can’t turn back.  To a place where we say everything, even what needs not be said, so that the silence can rest peacefully between those we love and those who seek to love us in return.  We come to a switch on the wall, and when we do, we are bound to flip off the projector screen that creates the illusion of a thing, because our projection is a failed and always false representation of who someone is.  The version we create of a truth is never as beautiful as the Truth itself, even if the truth is coffee grounds on the kitchen floor, and a dog that needs to be fed his dinner.

To stand aside, to get out of the way of what wants to come screaming to the surface: this is our job in loving.  To approach the truth like a temple, on our knees, bearing fruit and incense and a heart not full of itself, not full of its own love, but a heart that can withstand being given what it doesn’t already have.  This is the gift of the heart that seeks to be transformed through Love.

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