My Best Example

The sun is up, but my eyes are not open yet. The hand stroking my forehead is warm, tender, large and eloquent. Lapping my heart, a wave of the oceanic love I am held by. A love that bolsters me a thousand times a thousand times each day. That grows like wild grasses alongside the path of my life, brushing against me gently, even when my steps are hurried, even when my mind is unquiet. 

A greenly growing companionship, steadfast, alive, natural. As varied and unchanging as the sky above. A love that does not interrogate or demand. Radiant and effortlessly life-giving. Like the sun. It is at once my sanctuary, bedrock, ship of passage, a storehouse of stillness, a treasury of energy that dazzles and dazes, fills me with awe.  I did nothing to deserve it. How such largesse is given, so lightly into my flawed hands I do not know.

There was no vetting process. And never once, not even in the midst of my least pleasant moments, not even in the midst of my most unreasonable moods– has that love threatened retraction, has that love ever changed into the subtlest shade of not-quite-love. This love is a constant so unconditional it baffles the mind, blossoms the heart, calls forth the soul of my soul. I receive it as perpetually as lungs receive air. When I hold my breath I realize how much depends on it.

This love is my first definition, my best example, my dearest experience — of grace.