The table

I have this friend who is cloaked in silence.  She rests in the folds of quiet and looks out with eyes saucer-wide.  She is not afraid, exactly. It is not fear that causes her to choose corners over conversations.  Nor is she aloof.  This friend, with the dark ringlets and graceful hands, she is careful.

I have another friend who walks bravely, her courage garnered from years of walking between emotional land mines.  Her gait has the slightest hitch, the only hint that something once bound her.  But what once was broken has been stoutheartedly knitted back together and now, she moves mountains, that girl.

And so I sit with them in a corner booth while the sky rages and rips apart and weeps outside.  There have been times when each one of us was like that sky, broken and split and leaking and, like mother birds, we pulled our coats wide and made shelter in the shadow of our wings. Tonight, the storm remains outside the window, but when we sneak furtive glances we can see our reflections set upon the dark clouds and we remember.

We talk and laugh and reflect and on the table are broken pieces of chips and when we lick our lips we can still taste the goodness.  Our glasses sweat onto the table and with each sip a new circle is embedded on the table.  As the night ticks on, those circles layer one upon the other, and its impossible to know from which glass they came.

This gathering, it is a feast and I want to forever remember the taste of it all.

Something like a miracle is happening in these moments.  My wallflower friend, she pulses and she comes alive.  She emerges from her dark corners and when she steps forward, the light falling in waves upon her face, her whole countenance tilts upwards in response.  There is a blooming and it is beautiful.

And my other friend, she sighs deeply and her armor falls and there is this grand clanking and it is like music.  I look across the table and I see her heart, naked and exposed.  It stands there on the edge of a great precipice, swelling with muted anticipation, until there is an awakening and she realizes that she is safe.

And I know it now, deep and full and rounded--this is what life in the Kingdom looks like.  And it is here.  And it is now.