He is who He is who He is.

oh to the God who is forever open. arms outstretched.

as a little girl i remember thinking your feet touched down in front of the choir and you reached past the clouds. perhaps you held the sun. but you didn't burn. your hands were old and wise - wrinkles marked out like the countries of the earth. boundary lines within the creases around the eyes.

and then they said you lived within. my heart a little home, a hobbit hole for my miniature Jesus. setting the table, and speaking to my head through an olden horn phone.

you sang me songs and i became a grade school playwright and you were my audience. awake at night, eyes intoxicated by the spinning fan and the shadows that crept through the blinds. i wrote stories, and you always applauded. you'd whisper, "this is your best work as of yet."

soon you were my champion. my hiding place. a cove off the shore, with dry walls and sea shells.

you came out from within, and down from above. you stood among my comrades and whispered truth. "this is the way. walk in it."

the closer i came, your hands seemed less ethereal and more full of flesh. blood and bone underneath fingers that had seen labor. no longer bleeding, but still a home from which it poured forth. the river that offered perfection at no cost to me.

you roared. you swirled around me.
your jaw opened and from within you came the stars.
your eyes opened and i saw, truly, the beginning and the end.

pain was dwarfed in your presence. under your shadow emotion burst within.

we smelled the same. you and i. cut from the same cloth. yet within the tension of your being the world existed. within the tension of my frame was a clambering for more.

more of you. more of myself. myself understood as it was hidden within you.

my hair blew over my eyes in the tornado of your being. i peered through to a God who was bigger, braver, and much more sure than i ever could be.

and then you whispered, "i've only just begun."