Why am I so fascinated about you? The answer isn’t to be found in books. And I would tell you in few words, so candidly. Why am I fascinated by you? It is this: that you are just like every other person, and that you are just too different from anyone else. That gives a little twist on your face…

Do not get scandalized when I say you are like everyone else, yet so different and unique. I see you in your beauty, limpid like the moon, opening like the budding rose under the first streaks of sunlight, with royal petals spreading out to embrace the warmth that makes you feel just like you. Yes, because you are confident, wounded yet letting great lights to flow out from those wounds. It is courage. It is beauty. It is sublime truth.

And I see all this in your brokenness.

Yes, brokenness. And I mean the brokenness that has been the yoke society left on you… when you became daughter of desecrated loyalties. When you became heir of a lost kingdom. Dreams dying with the decline of hopes that were made for you. I have heard your stories, spoken out of trust and the pure desire to reach me. You were not afraid of things that make men ashamed. You were just you, looking at me, reaching me subtly in ways I have never known. You were there, weak and broken, yet beautiful inside, beautiful in the things you touched and in the things you looked upon. For by touching and looking, I could smell your fragrance in them. You were a whore and you were a virgin; you were the hardened human who is domineering, hesitant — at times — but you were a virgin. You were supple and wild at the same time. You were just you, echoing a thousand notes of a music that enraptured my being….because, I heard and saw myself in saw, saw my fears and hidden imports of joy.

To look, to listen, to touch someone without judging… to stare in wonder at the unique beauty that looks back at you. Fear dissipates, trust becomes a boon, and you know, beyond all that, that you would never feel the same. You have value. It feels great. I have value in your eyes! I heard it in a silent murmur that wend deeper that the cackle of thunder.

Here are two things that happened when I met you. I had a new vision of welcome and gratitude. Being present, siting before another being and talking or listening is always a gift — so precious it is hard to know — and, it is much more than that. It is always giving something of yourself out. It is not your time, but memories, a whole history streaming out with those smiles and simple laughter. Welcome is gratitude. There are millions of us in this wan world yet you will find very few to sit with. There are a thousand listeners, but you will find few who open their being in candid welcome. When you listen to my pain and frustrations, to my detours and debaucheries, you opened a place of welcome in your heart where a new journey begins with newer vistas and horizons. It will always be at its beginning and that is what makes it exciting and beautiful. Always at its beginning. There is never an end!