photo by denise andrade
It is an act of love to stride out into the weather naked.
What is protection anyway but paper-thin skins piled on top of each other upon us, placed there by injury and fear?
To peel off the crackled drying things is to expose the beauty underneath, to allow the truth to see blessed daylight; to come into contact with, perhaps, a lie, that became an imposter and hung on for too long: summer's last zucchini gathering a white coat in the crisper.
To cast off is to *brighten*, and I could well use a bit more brightening. Could you?
I've been surprised by the most recent shedding layer, which feels injurous, and intermingled with gashes from my own sword, as well as those unintentional, unconscious lacerations from someone close to me. How I'm working through it is by declaring freedom from it, and holding onto hope-the notion that it will be possible to repair that which was sacrificed and make something new out of almost nothing.
If I start with my own soul, though, it isn't nothing, it's a little ball of light I can hold gently and birth into fresh butterfly-being. I'm coming to believe that it was Protection which caused me to sustain the injury, by putting me into a long sleep so I couldn't feel what was being done.
To feel awake is to feel warmth returning to the stone figures, as when Aslan breathes his magical exhalation.
Protection isn't needed when it's not raining.
And as I've learned from my friends in Portland, it's not needed even when it is.
