Sometimes it seems that when I turn toward you, I must first unclench the muscles of my soul. I must tell my heart to put down its shield, and open, just a bit, to your music.

I suddenly realize that I have been straining to hold the quiet at bay.

Why would I do that?

Is it because I cannot be open without also being at risk? Until I remember that you love me, the risk is far too great.

Every time I turn toward you, it seems I must push aside the dogma of the world – a dogma that pits me against all others, in a fight I’m sure to lose. The messages in the litany of the world are deeply imprinted on my soul. I cannot easily shake them off.

It is as if, in that moment of turning toward you, I cross into another world, another culture, where everything works by different rules. Where things seem upside down, and I have to listen hard to understand even the simplest things.

Yet, even with its strangeness, I am more at home in this space than in the world of my daily existence. My old clothes no longer fit. Nor do my old excuses. Yet, somehow, I do fit. Somehow this is my soul’s true home.

Is that what ‘salvation’ really means: finding my true self, suddenly at home in you?

[photo by Crystian Cruz per cc 2.0]