#BlogElul 25 - Begin

Breathe.

Just breathe. Stand poised at some achingly high pinnacle, where the air hurts, and your arms are lifted over your head in an arc of fluid grace, and just

Breathe.

Until your arms shake from the strain of your posed poise

and the air - God! the air is so thin and cold,

and you want to gasp, but you can't,

because every time you do -

every damned time you gather in your body to catch your breath,

the ground under your feet isn't as solid as you thought,

and it shifts and crumbles, just a little -

just enough to let you know that one good breath will send you
tumbling into some impossibly deep, endless chasm

that will swallow you whole, and you will fall
forever.

So you just stand in some poised pose, ready and strained past breaking,

And you tremble and try not to stagger under the weight of your fear.

And then you look up

At a sky that takes what little breath you have away

That is a dome of azure and stars and heaven

And it falls up into forever.

And you do gasp then, at the beauty of it
At the wonder and the glory of that expanse of light and dark
That is soft and hard at once, that is silent and still and waiting
And you realize then, in that instant
That you are the altar; your fear,the offering
and you will bleed out your despair as you are drawn near,
and nearer still.
Leap! Leap out and let your arms fall in a graceful arc
That, too, is your offering, your sacrifice:
All that poise, all that pain, laid on the altar of your body
to be caught, to be ever caught by God, by hope.

Breathe. And again - breathe.
And again
Begin.