Are you sure you want to join me out here?

The air is thin, and the risks are dense. You will be called a fool. This is not a hazard but a certainty.

You will regret yourself daily. You will get yourself into thickets that could have been avoided for a lifetime.

You will feel like you’re running out of time. You will feel like you’re impinging on proper people’s time. You will lose the lullaby beat of ordinary time.

Are you sure about this?

Don’t misunderstand me. I can barely restrain my hope that you’ll hop out on the twig beside me. I want you to behold the beauty and the broadlands and the breadth and height and length and depth.

I want you to be my holy kindred spirit. I am doused in disorganized religion, and all it takes to find family is a mystical “maybe.”

You may court fairies in tree knots or patterns in the stars. You may keep Sabbath in the suburbs or sing in street-front tongues. As you ride ancestors’ horses or see the One in a thousand faces, we walk together. If you trust there’s a meaning, take my hand.

Jesus is my everything, but if you have even an inkling of an enchanted universe, we are on the same page of the boundless book.

We know we are not alone, which makes life luscious.

We know we are Love’s offspring, which gives days life.

We know our ache is honest, which makes love bold.

And thrilling.
And inexhaustible.
And extremely hazardous.

Winged with wonder, we can’t help but fly. Loved beyond sense, we sense our purpose. Sent like candles, we entrust ourselves to the Breath.

Are you sure you want to do this?

I’m not sure either of us has a choice. Once we’ve been swept into the net of love, we won’t forget our wings. Released, we are bewildered by our bravery, feeling around for fears that fell out of our pockets.

Once loved, we become lovers. News gets out.

We are the ones who hand out benefits of the doubt like Halloween candy. We are smitten with surly coworkers and mincing aunts, the old men who shouldn’t flirt with us and the new friends who we shouldn’t trust. We cannot miss their light. We cannot knot our tongues when tenderness wants to talk.

We assume the best, and we are and are not wrong. We bumble into caves with torches that were not requested. We confuse the people we’re trying to comfort. We confuse ourselves.

We love our shambolic lives. We find symbolism in seedlings and sonnets in spiderwebs. The supermarket is as sacred as any basilica. We run through torrential rain with pink buckets. We get more than we receive. We overflow.

We ladle our love without making sure there’s enough in the pot for tomorrow. We break off pieces of bread for the great and the ungrateful. We call people out for being outrageously glorious. We call people in.

We get called foolish and childish, impulsive and innocent.

We get exhausted and exasperated.

We get impaled on the sharp end of human nature.

We don’t get to see that our love never returns void.

We do get to see vistas reserved for mystics and tiny birds.

Are you sure you want to join me out here on the ledge?

I’m not known for risk-taking, but this is my essential imprudence.

We’re going to fall. We’re going to fall in love with people and sunsets and glimpses of what weary ones deny is divine.

I would love your company.