{ beneath the depths above us }

Today sits outside my window, waiting, slightly slouching beneath the weight of the humidity gradually setting in. The sunlight is muted, as it tends to be these early summer mornings when the earth is delivering fresh libations of dew and vapor. The alter, itself; the offering, it's life-blood. How simple that act of praise, written as it is into the grain of the world. But what an act of faith! The earth gives back to the sky the very gift which gives it life. The greenery, in joy, in fruition, gives it's very life--self-sacraficially--to the sky from whence that life first fell. There is no expectancy or certainty, on the earth's part, that that life will return. It gives wholly of itself, it relinquishes itself. In silence.

We call it the "water cycle" and bring it into our classrooms, containing it with diagrams on posters and textbooks. We domesticate it. Demystify it. But predictability need not supplant surprise or wonder - or emulation. But cycles are circles - and we all know there is no point where a circle begins, so how could we even begin to enter into a circle, this cycle of praise and blessing. Each point along the curve is only what must have been or what must be. Our lives, we tell ourselves, are different, need be different. Life, we tell ourselves, is about choice, free will, autonomy, space.

What a sad, sad lie.
What an easy, easy lie.
What a lonely, lonely lie

. . . when every touch, every word can move us to tears, to anger, to joy. Our bodies, our lives, our "selves" are always a thousand leagues beneath the beautiful and frightening ocean surface, touched, pressed, always. Our stars do not shine pure and straight but are refracted a thousand times by the depths above us, by those manifold lives around us that make up any singular life. Yes, we move, we walk, we choose to turn, but beneath the wieght of the depths above us, and within the movement of currents around us.

Currents, cycles, circles. Moving, turning, re-turning.

We are afraid to admit we are moved by currents, that we are always already within cycles. That we are moved, pressed, and without complete control. We are so afraid we will not be able breathe down here, underwater, in this the thickest of days when the humidity materializes on every flesh. When our bodies become the world's altar, when we are wrapped up with and within those summer day libations. When we are dragged into a cycle, a circle, a current of praise that ever presses and lifts us. When knowledge gives way to acknowledgment. When we feel the weight beneath the depths above us.