Breathtaking and Bare

The Red Maple in our front yard waits all year to live up to its name. Somewhere behind the ordinary green it prepares to become more. More brilliant. More fiery. More breathtaking. It plays the part of ordinary things, day after day, month after month, until it just can't do it anymore. The greens fade to yellows. The yellows warm into oranges.

Then, one day when the sun sinks into just the right spot in the sky, we can see it. Like Moses at the burning bush, we turn aside to see what has been there forming all along.  Like Icharus flying too close to the sun, its colors flame against the sky, only surrender to the wind and fall--back to the ground; back into the ancient cycle of things.

Somewhere behind the ordinary, we long for more. We long to become more brilliant, more beautiful, more captivating. More. We try to capture moments at the height of perfection, hoping that maybe, if we do everything just right, we won't have to let go. We won't have to surrender to the seasons and be laid bare. But we weren't made to stay the same.

We aren't build to withstand the consuming fires of perfectionism. Our beauty comes from the letting go; from our willingness to turn aside and behold the breathtaking and the bare. The brilliant and the ordinary. Day after day, month after month, we are made to keep becoming. We are made, not to live up to anything, but to live into our belovedness--the most breathtaking identity of all.