The Truest Thing About You

If One Thing Is True

You are held fast,

In Love so vast, uncontained, unrestrained.

Frail you may be, with your trifling woes,

but immense is the plain beneath your toes.

How deep and rich the soil that roots you,

how vibrant, serene the song that refutes you,

in your willful wondering, wandering, withering,

your blithering voice, so prone to claim

with weary disdain,

“The world is vain, capricious and mean.

miserly, lean, dispensing crumbs,

rancid butter scraped across bread,

my order misread,

my hopes underfed.”

Repent!

Spread your arms wide beneath generous skies,

let starlight wash away your self-pitying sighs.

Throw open your window to dawn-drunk songbirds,

you’ve spent far too many hours imbibing the wrong words,

the lies, the Kool-Aid, the screen-lit parade of truth betrayed.

Wake up!

to the scent of a new day borning,

and savor each flavor, the colors of morning.

It’s your choice to rejoice or swallow the shallow,

to rest in glad silence, or churlishly wallow.

Turn and face a different way, away from the crowd, the proud.

What will you find?

Life!

as perceived by you (a thing dreary and dark, a question mark), a mere veneer.

There’s joy beneath, fathoms deep, galaxies of goodness soar above you.

You are, right this moment,

marinated,

saturated,

percolated

In Love.

Come home, dear heart, to this embracing space.

Grace!

Listen in silence to the tune too thunderous, too wondrous to hear.

The song is Love,

piercing the darkness,

overwhelming all evil,

making everything beautiful at just the right time.

Return to your heart, that’s where you start,

away from the judging, your grudging thoughts trudging

through ditches of disdain and righteous pretension.

Pay attention!

The instruments are tuning, the dancers are turning,

a hush has fallen,

a hand is held out,

Three-in-One waiting, anticipating,

Respond!

Step onto the floor, the dance is begun, just run

without fear of failure.

It’s what you were made for—to love and be loved

even now…

even if…

But there is no cliff.

You are held fast, you always have been.

Janet Hanson, c. 2017

God, give us a voice to sing the truest thing, and ears to hear and be glad.

Photograph courtesy of Melanie Hunt