Mystical Bride

Ten thousand voices murmuring inside you, declaiming, insisting, some angry, some full of tears, all falling silent at the Christ-whisper:

"Come rest in Me. I Am the mereness of your Being. I Am the Abundance that overflows when simply existing is enough. I Am your Christ-Self, more You than who you think you are. I am your long-patient lover, the Am who waits for I in the bridal chamber of the heart. Come, drink of my long-aged Wine. Recline at the feast of who you really are.

"The canopy I built for this wedding is the sky. The galaxies are chandeliers, hung low to glitter like a diamond tiara for you. Stars pour my light into your cup, singing, "Just as you are, just as you are!" Haven't you understood their language? Light comes from inside.

Now is the time to shatter your cup. Let me pour this transforming sweetness on your head, your brow, your lips, your chest. My ecstasy is that you are anointed as I am anointed, in the same stream, pour from the same Breath.

"What part of you will not gather under the Chuppah? Your blood, your breath, your desire? Your old story of being alone and apart from Me? I invite all of you to the wedding, the stumbling unmarried uncle of your doubt, the muttering spinster of your hesitation, the children of your uncertainty. Let them whirl with the best dancers and call for more wine!

"At this wedding, One becomes Two. That is the real Mystery. Oneness is too easy! This confusion of lips, hearts and names is divine inebriation, wildness of the best vintage. I have saved it for last, our twoness!

"Therefor, for the last time, shout this invitation to your shadow, lingering outside, afraid to pass through the door into light. Plead again just once to all the members of the court of your body who imagined themselves rejected and despised:

Come! You were betrothed to this Joy before your mother conceived you. There is no time to wonder how worthy you are. The music has begun. Your Beloved is mad with longing. Come this instant, or do not bother to exist!"