We are experimenters in the holy, as well as subjects of the experiment. – Daniel Snyder

Perhaps it is time for a holy experiment.
My bruised soul 
(bruised, in part, from my own abuse)
Has had some time to heal.

My ears have quieted
And the voices that pounded
Or even softly, persistently insisted
Have eased their harping. 

The ‘musts’ and ‘shoulds’
That have constrained my quest
Are not so loud, just now.
Their absence gives me room.

If I can trust the frameworks
Of a loving truth to guide me – 
A truth I cannot claim, 
But can claim me, instead …

Perhaps I can risk 
A holy experiment.
Perhaps I can let go
And risk the fall to hope.

Hope is a risk, you know.
It does not let you cling to certainty.
It does not let you cling, at all. 
It requires an open hand and heart.

I feel as if I have been scaling a cliff
But my fingers have lost their hold.
I can no longer even see the ground
And so, I tumble, down and down.
Fearful of a fall to the death of all I know; 
Of all my self-constructed assurance;
I fall into the dark and groundless silence.

Yet somehow, I feel my soul reorienting
Catlike, turning with my feet to the ground
Not knowing, even, how I know to turn.
Is a soul made like that?

I would not have let go
Except I could no longer hold on.
There are, sometimes, those
Unavoidable, necessary falls
That take you, though resisting, 
Into a different frame.
The shell must crack
Before the new life can emerge. 

It’s just so hard to be grateful 
For that crack. 

Could it be that every death
Leads to a bigger life
If we will but allow
The breaking of the shell?

Could it be that the deepest truth
Is that death is not the inevitable end?
Could it be that it is life, instead, 
It what is inevitable? 
Is there, perhaps, an inevitable beginning
As love invites us home? 

Photo by Carlos Ebert retrieved from Flickr per cc 2.0 Quotation from Snyder, Daniel O.. Praying in the Dark: Spirituality, Nonviolence, and the Emerging World (p. 66). Kindle Edition.