Are you really all and in all? Do you fill all in all? Are all things from you and to you and of you and through you? Does eternity dwell within you?
Am I really blessed with every spiritual blessing, chosen, adopted, bestowed with grace, redeemed, part of a mystery, inheriting, hoping, sealed, filled with faith, in you? Are all my fountains in you?
Is this what that looks like?
I never thought I would ever feel it
But your love gave me all that I needed.
You are filling my five senses. I am in love with the one whose government and peace know no end. Neither outside of me nor within me. You keep coming in further, consuming me. I won’t turn my face away.
The valley blows in the wind like an emerald ocean. We sit here together. I see the fullness of you, feel the fullness of you, and these words are just shorthand. I’m describing these things, but we’re really writing about abiding, oneness, authority, beholding, becoming, harvest, and your image and your glory. We’re writing about Ephesians, Colossians, Job, Genesis 2 and 12-15, John 14-17, 1 John, Hebrews, Revelation.
I can’t even get through the first four verses of Song of Solomon anymore. I set out to read the whole book and I get stuck. It’s like quicksand. How could I ever move past this?
Let him smother me with kisses—his Spirit-kiss divine.
So kind are your caresses,
I drink them in like the sweetest wine!
Your presence releases a fragrance so pleasing—
over and over poured out.
For your lovely name is “Flowing Oil.”
No wonder the brides-to-be adore you.
Draw me into your heart.
We will run away together into the king’s cloud-filled chamber.
But her entire story is my own. I have fallen headlong for you. We have come to the mountain together. You have clothed me. My garden blooms. And now I want all of my brothers and sisters to delight in your fruit in me.
It’s a love I’ve come to know by touch. How do I pour my love on only one side of your face? Everything I love is you, and you are everything I love. I don’t know how to write without filming, how to sing without painting, how to dance without staying up late into the night by the fire, looking deeply into Joy Riley’s eyes and talking about you with you. I don’t know how to talk about your beauty without talking about your glory, how to talk about glory without talking about intimacy, intimacy without vulnerability, vulnerability without hope, hope without faithfulness, faithfulness without goodness, goodness without desire, desire without completeness, completeness without expansion, expansion without rest.
My brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, are all swimming in you beside me. Joy sits on the sofa across from me and we just soak in every sight and sound of you. We blast her wedding playlist and coast into imagination with you. We hear the birds and the most heavenly wind chimes in between songs. We look out at the brilliant blue sky and the glittering aspen leaves. She looks at me while I write, and I feel her gaze, and I know. She is with you, in you.
Scripts, poems, lyrics, essays, journals, field notes, letters. Films, photos, paintings, music videos, memoirs, eye contact. Music, dancing, flagging, singing, shouting, praying in tongues, conversations. What format could I possibly choose? It’s like a table spread for me of the most delicious and nourishing foods. What intertextuality within you.
But my favorite format is life itself.
In you is life, and this life the light of men.