Shedding a Skin

1.

On a Wyoming mountaintop path, across from the Grand Tetons, I walked and I listened.
Below, in the valley’s bed, I saw the great and powerful Snake River curve and flow.

I felt, in that moment, that I was being called to worship.
Compliant, I stood still for a long while, and the Snake River
was quiet and I was quiet and the air was quiet, still. 

I watched the grasses along the slope stand straight, soft, and tall.
Their slight crimson stalks pointed to the heavens proclaiming their beauty.

I looked up and saw, in the broad daylight of the midmorning sky,
the half-moon of Elul, tilted, spilling out in urgency as if to say: 

We are called to attention. Pay attention. These days are precious.
Now is the time to change, transform, unfold.
The majesty of the river flows, nothing stays the same.
It is time to shed the old habits and assumptions that keep you from beauty such as this.

2.        

So I wondered what it feels like when a snake sheds its skin.
Does it hurt like the ripping of a bandage?
Does it feel light and clean like the first haircut of the summer?
Is there sadness and loss?
Or does it feel oddly free of old and familiar constraints?

What does it feel like when that snake forms a new skin?
Does it prickle and sting?
Does it itch like the healing of a wound?
Is there a sense of awe at the newness of it all?
Or fear that the new will not be as comfortable as the old?

3.

And the mountains and the valleys and the river and the sky.
And the snakes and the grasses and a woman wandering a mountaintop path.
And the sounds and silences and the need to change and the resistance.

Let nothing stay the same. It is time to shed the old habits and assumptions that keep you from beauty such as this.