by choice or ignorance,
makes for a bracing climate;
and love waxed cold
in the days when
the cloak was but a lining and a promise.
So I rolled over
(some would say repented)
and looked up to the layer that was above me:
the white,
the light.
"Be still,
sink deep," said a whisper.
I gazed up for some time,
heard new voices,
and finally,
I understood the rip.
When I crawled out
of that cape, my cave;
I sought the Giver
(as He had planned I should do.)
Still waiting at the base of His Tree,
He'd laid a feast for me, it being
one glittering edible morsel,
sheer life--
rich like bread,
juicy like fruit.
Intimate was our discourse, this time
much like wisdom
though first unspoken, later
gurgles to wash the grasses,
quiet, unobtrusive
as an ancient spring.
"Now, my sister, my wife," He said,
"What do you know of the mantle?"
"I know the answer to the question
we all ask whether we realize it or not--
the question in every heartbeat
in every breath.
The question of the silent part.
The question of the rip.
How can He allow it?"
He nodded.
"Yes, many are the glowing bottles in heaven,
filled with tears
and scented with that question."
But I continued. "There is more, though.
It is this:
What can separate me from the love of God?
That is the courageous heart of the rip, isn't it?
Many faint-hearted will fall at that first doubt.
That first perceived flaw in the fabric.
Few will press on to see the point of it.
Diabolos,
(that "one who casts through")
does indeed cast about
fitfully in that between-place
even now thinking:
there will be a weak spot in the fabric
along some seam,
a place ripe
for greater tearing.
See, O king, and rend your clothes.
What will you say when the women under your rule
are reduced to eating their own children.
See, O priest, and rend your clothes.
What will you say as you perceive a witness of blasphemy
(you are power-drunk beyond discernment)
on the tongue of God Himself
in the flesh.
What witness do we need?
One small, calculated rip.
What rush of power through the ragged edges.
What will you say, O wicked queen who would steal the throne from Judah,
when once she found the rip.
She killed her own offspring, not for food, but for power.
Athaliah, Jezebel:
you are the same:
you who transfuse the blood of the weak,
(even your own blood, just flowing in new wineskins)
to ferment a cup of power.
You drink it down. Does it satisfy?
Athaliah--
Whore of Babylon--
even you will rend your cloak
when you see the boy king, secretly preserved
taking his rightful throne.
But remember,
(and so few do)
that though a woman tried to kill him
a woman also saved him.
And remembered the woman who bled
all those years;
but perceiving wholeness in a cloak,
even the hem,
because of Who wore it,
she became evidence.
"Further witness we do need."
Still said the priest corrupt.
And witness is given:
The witness of a curtain
a flowing wall of separation.
What thought the man who fashioned the loops to hang it:
This is the price
of my unholiness--
this like the heavens--
a curtain between me
and my creator.
Separateness.
Must it always be?
But the curtain one day experienced consummation
with the very flesh it represented--
and it ripped.
The rip, my Lord,
is made of nail scars and a sword
formed by earthquakes and dark skies;
but the rip opens a chamber unseen by ranks of humans
for generations.
Who was the first to dare?
Who was the first to peer into that inner sanctum,
when once light came again
To find it quiet,
covered in dew.
"And so you have the question," said the Giver, "that matters most."
"And if I may be so bold, I think I have the answer;
the answer of the heartbeat and the breath.
There was a tabernacle made, a veil;
but now,
what can separate me from the love of God?
(When the sun was darkened
and the veil was ripped)
What can separate me from Your love?"
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