pull up a chair

she took my breath away this morning, just a half-breath maybe, as if i’d caught her in the boudoir slipping off her tonsil-colored robe. in broad daylight.

as if the curtains were peeled back, and she didn’t give a hoot, really, who stood and watched. she was slipping off the outer garb, the cloak that held her tight, and she was easing into something, well, a little lighter, looser, flimsy. a little shoulders-back, stretch-your-arms, stick-out-your-unveiled-bosom. come close. come take a whiff.

oh, that spicy girl, she’s getting brazen now. altogether dancing with the rhythm of the earth as she picks up the vernal syncopation. chill winds, be damned. we’re going with sunlight here. if cold fronts and pressure zones scramble with the mercury, push it down, only to snap back and let it soar, well, then the blossoms on my blessed bush could not be lesser bothered.

she’s mid-act now. the crescendo in the offing. you can feel it, smell it, sense it. she’s hitting stride. the days of cowering, petals clasped, revealing nothing of her inner beauty, those hours now are past.

she is lost in time and space. whirling. stripping. nudging all her sisters. come, come. join me in this dance. bend back your inner petals, arch your throat, and open wide.

it’s as if we’ve captured that rare frame of utter courage. when what was kerneled, furled, and clenched, is, suddenly, finally, breaking open.

how fine a thing to catch. to witness. to behold.

the life force pulsing forward, inspiring us to do the same.

how often, in the human dance of life, have you caught the moment of unloosing? when someone you love–or you yourself, even–at last, shrug off the tethers, the ropes, that held them–you, maybe–so wholly bound?

i’ve seen it, marveled, gasped.

there was the chilly, breezy sunday just a year ago, when my firstborn, without preamble, got back up on a bike. he’d last been on, the day he broke his neck. and i am telling you, that remounting, months later, was a wobbly one. but as he rode away, pedaling into the wind, my heart was beating double-time, so proud of his un-trumpeted courage.

just this winter past, i watched my little one take on page after page, in book after book, when all the alphabet seemed so scrambled, and made so little sense. he told me one night as i buttoned his pajamas, how all the kids had called him “stupid.” but then he climbed in bed, grabbed his flashlight from the secret place he kept it, underneath his pillow, and tried and tried again. and then, one day, at last, the sentences, they came. he reads now, all the time, hours and hours on end. no end in sight.

i have seen it, yes, in myself, in the simple slathering of almond butter on a slice of bread. in chewing, swallowing, 30 years of fear. in the picking up of fingers, typing on an alphabet of keys, telling stories that had reason to be told.

oh, yes, i’ve witnessed holy courage. the transcendence that comes when the shackles all are finally stripped away.

every time, it takes my breath. holds it very still. saturates me, through and through, with the dawning, knowing, that within us, each and every one, there is the seed of something truly sacred.

it is the essence of our glory, the whole sense of our creation, and we come to know it only if we muster all the strength and courage to step boldly into light and bare our deepest inner truth.

just as that tender beauty up above, whose brave disrobing i took in this very morning, as she went about her business, becoming something rare and bold and holy, just beyond my kitchen door.

have you caught courage in the act? watched someone’s inner beauty finally unfold in sunlight? how has it inspired you?