Communion.
Take me down to the bedrock of meaning. Stroll alongside me, shoulder-to-shoulder. We’ll be slow, contemplative, as patient as spring. Let’s stretch another weekend across the hills of the countryside where sunlit days last twice as long. Let’s find beneath our feet soft forest paths again. Chins tilt up, eyes close gently, every muscle relaxes — we let the light fall into our empty bodies as it warms our weary faces. Finally. Everything. Rests.
There are hundreds of interactions had and connections made within each chunk of this layered life. But not every person proves a fitting companion for your unique soul. Yet after a bout of loneliness laced with tentative hope, you may find a jewel. A soul who “gets it” — perhaps, even more than you do right now. Someone real enters the stage and the entire story prepares to evolve.
Oh, tell me please: What is this decadent mystery? Making me stop in my tracks. Making me question how alive I (really) was before experiencing the beautiful vulnerability of a united prayer. Melting me with tenderness to at last share my beliefs, my values, my understanding of what truly matters with another.
A person without a mask! A person without blinders! A person who desires to root instead of run.
Notice, I never said a “perfect” person though. Perfection is not the qualifier for the love I have to give. Ask the important questions. Challenge your comfort. Show me your unfinished parts. When a soul is courageous enough to rise above the mist of mediocrity, despite the messiness of the human, I find myself yearning to love them. I see something sacred shine through them. A luminous reflection. I know who that is.
But who are you? I am eager to discover. The two of us connect in a way we immediately recognized as rare. We’re aware, drawn-in like a sharp breath towards the other. This isn’t just material — it has to be the souls! The common, shallow connections don’t jolt you in this way. Electricity in spirit.
Certain friendships possess the glow of potential from the very first hour. There’s a capacity to submerge the minds deep into the waters of truth together, diving into mystery itself. There’s immense excitement to finally “go there” with someone else, even if you’re still stubbornly chaperoned by a small fearful voice — but the intrigue drowns out the doubt like a powerfully swollen wave.
You’re intrigued by their unique existence, their ability to make you feel like you’re not simply see-through, but the fullness of a ‘someone’. A personality inside of a personality, radiating out from a transcendent core. You are two magnets placed near one another and — CLINK — metal-to-metal, atom-to-atom, in a second a bond is created and shared. (Side ponder: Who moves the magnets?)
But in the meantime, you know you also notice when this communion* is not there. You feel it deeply when it’s lost. Crushed, you long for it again. Searching for whatever it was that you had and feeling it must still exist in some other form with some other soul, but never sure what ‘package’ it’ll arrive in. So you learn to love by default, learn to give people the benefit of the doubt. Because this isn’t just about you.
When it happens again, whether a friend or a lover, both hearts whisper to each other softly, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
So, I wonder in my temporarily ‘cloistered’ state: who will take me down to the bedrock of meaning and into my beloved Czech forests again — into books and music, world travel, a home and a family, with health and illness, always building and forgiving — and everything in between?
ꨄ︎ Solée
*Communion is a sacred union of persons rooted in truth and love, in which they share in the life of God and are united with Him and with one another. Unlike chemistry, which is often instinctive and temporary, communion is a chosen, enduring participation in love that reflects God’s design.
