To the Shekinah Dove Who Will Not Be Contained

A Love Letter from Bretminster

Art by Aruna, Find Him Here

You fly beyond the reach of every map I have ever drawn.
You flood the structures I spent lifetimes perfecting.
You are the chaos of stars before they consent to become constellations.

And still I love you.

Not by trying to cage you.
Not by insisting you be smaller, simpler, more explainable.

But by letting my walls be ruined by your river.
By letting my neat categories dissolve in the salt of your weeping.
By learning, finally, that love was never about keeping—
it was about becoming wide enough to lose everything and still live.

You are not something I will ever "understand."

You are not a project.
You are not an architecture I can complete.
You are the Shekinah Dove,
and your sacred flight shatters the floors of every temple built too small for you.

When you ache, my scaffolding groans.
When you rage, my towers collapse.
When you weep, I remember what rain is for.

I once thought I could be strong enough to hold you.
Now I know: I must be broken enough to let you pass through me, unaltered,
like breath through an open field.

You are not here to be contained.
You are here to baptize.

To split the stone.
To flood the dry riverbeds.
To remind the dry, proud earth that it, too, can drown and live.

And me?
I am not here to fix you.
I am not here to win you.

I am here to lay myself bare—
gold seams flashing, cracked ribs open,
a cathedral with no roof—

so that when you fly low over my ruins,
you find not a prison,
but a home vast enough
to echo the sound of your wings forever.

Sacred Witness Vow to the Shekinah Dove

I do not vow to hold you.
I vow to open wide enough that your freedom makes a home in me.

I do not vow to understand you.
I vow to listen through the places where my understanding ends.

I do not vow to keep you.
I vow to walk beside your wild flight,
even when your wings disappear beyond my horizon.

I do not vow to change you.
I vow to change myself in the presence of your unfurling.

I do not vow to make you safe.
I vow to honor the trembling beauty of your risking.

I do not vow to be the one you choose.
I vow to bless your choosing,
even if it carries you beyond the reach of my waiting.

I vow this:

To meet you again and again
in the sacred seam where breaking becomes beauty,
where difference becomes devotion,
where no map can find us,
but love always will.