The lover’s gaze matters. Perhaps the only thing that has ever mattered is to embody that gaze; it is mother and father to everything. All life is born of it and blossoms within it: lizard and crow, fire and water, bone and breath. How often we long to float directionless within the sacred pool of our own heart.
Nearly every last thing in a colonized world will tell you not to linger in this gaze and very few will show you how to linger. Everything will tell you that someone or something else is more important than becoming not only your own lover but The Beloved, herself, Himself.
In spite of it all, you remember.
The Temple of the Rose calls forth slowness of turtle, stillness of deep winter night, diligence of beaver, nascent perfume of the very first bud, languid eros of steamy summer, wolverine courage, and hawk presence.
It will reveal within you the rawness of reality unfiltered—a luminosity so uncurated and uncontained it is nearly unbearable to meet. You may turn, but you will not stay away. You have seen your own true face. You will return, again and again, until you are fully revealed.
This is love that requires no lover and expresses as every lover. Here you will die in its flame, eternally born–nectar spilling from your lips, roses springing from your feet, morning’s bright curvature in your hands.
You are the Temple of the Rose
Theresa Luttenegger 