More than a Promise

I can’t offer you a promise, and I can’t offer you direction – but this doesn’t mean that I am lost. It just means that everything changes, and that includes you and I.

It means that, to promise anything, or to draw any kind of path, is to step outside of truth. It is to move out of the eternal present and into fabricated time. So I won’t offer you a promise.

What I will offer you is presence. I can offer you the here and now, uninterrupted by anxieties or regrets. I can offer you my awareness as we watch the moment unfold like an exotic and never before seen flower.

I can’t promise you peace, because that would be to say that it’s conditional – and we both know this isn’t true. Nor will I promise you constant contentment, because we learn more from the storms than we do the calm. Even love needs the occasional upset to grow wise and strong.

What I can offer you is groundedness and balance. I can offer awareness, openness, and harmony with the spirit of life. I can offer courage, even when it means burning down the things that no longer serve us, or cutting any binding ties. I can offer the daring to bring whatever lurks in the shadows out into the light, and the centeredness to sing us back to the sun even from the dead of night.

I can offer you strength, the strength to face every last skeleton that lurks in your closet and the strength to remain standing even when they feel the need to lash out. The strength of a woman who knows her own soul well enough to support you as you explore your own.

I can offer you prowess, the prowess to pull back the veils and walk beside you as you find your place. I offer boldness enough to stand up to your most carefully constructed characters, and to speak to the real you even as you work to maintain them or to tear them down.

I can’t promise you my body – because it, like all material things, is temporary and must eventually be returned to its source. What I will offer you instead is this current communion with a temporary tapestry of body, mind, and soul.

I can’t promise you perfection, nor will I try – but I can offer my essence, undisguised by denials, projections, and rules. I can offer you honesty, even when it means being the wrong one, the weak one, the strong one, or the critical one.

I can’t promise you perfection – but I can offer you my hand in this synchronized dance beyond time, across lines, between opposites, through the day and the night, swirling and gliding in equal stride, without attachments, masks, or weights.

I can promise integrity, but not of the sort that this world admires. I won’t be careful with my love and I won’t pretend that it must be regulated or contained. I won’t be careful with my love, but I will be gentle with your soul.

I won’t weigh you down with expectations, and I won’t assign you any roles. I will cherish the immensity of you and respect your sovereign right to express that as you will.

I honor your wildness as I honor my own – and I will, as far as my soul permits me, walk with you as you roam the forests, the mountains, the deserts, and the seas. I will stand witness to your spring, summer, fall, and winter and remain centered in the midst of your brightness, your darkness, your calm, and your storms. I will see you in your humanity and your divinity alike, and I will celebrate them as I also celebrate mine.

I see you, I accept you, and I love you as the divine expression of love that you are – just as I see, accept, and love myself as the same. Let’s come together now as teacher and student, student and teacher, as love and beloved, beloved and love, as protector and protected, protected and protector, as mirrors held up to infinity echoing an endless expression of love.

I can’t offer you a promise, and I can’t give you direction – but I can offer you this expression of my love. This is my hello. This is my invitation. May I have this dance?

©2017 Cristen Rodgers