To invoke Love
is to ask for a hug from a thunderstorm,
spill tea in the lap of the infinite trickster,
to make the biggest, most embarrassing mistake
of your life in front of everyone who matters.
To invoke Love
is to never know if it will come softly,
with the nuzzle of a beloved dog,
or pounce right on your chest with the strength of a lioness
protecting her cub, her pride, her homeland.
To invoke Love
is to take the risk of inviting chaos to visit the spaces
you spent so much time making tidy,
and watch as the breath of life scatters everything
you have only just folded and put away.
To invoke Love
is to allow for the possibility that your words
and actions might become so empowered
you can no longer believe in apathy,
or the self-righteous idea that nothing can change.
To invoke Love
is to give up self-deprecation, false humility, pride,
to consider yourself worthy to be made whole,
willing to encounter Love that will never
let us let each other go.
To invoke Love
is to guard against assumptions,
take care with our words and practice forgiveness,
not as ethereal ideal, but right here,
in the messy midst of our imperfect lives.
To invoke Love
is to approach each day and every person with wonder,
anticipating Love’s arrival: “Is this the moment?
Is this Love’s grant entrance?
Is this person the embodiment of Love? Am I the one?”
To invoke Love
is to play the fool, the one more concerned with loving
than with appearance or reputation,
the one ready and willing to be vulnerable,
abandoning anything that gets in Love’s way.
To invoke Love is to be ready to become Love.
Here. Now. In everything we do. Are you ready?
–Rev. Sean Parker Dennison, from Breaking and Blessing
