Running Up That Hill

Running Up That Hill

Poetic Prose by Charles E.J. Moulton

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This piece is dedicated to Kate Bush's famous song about man and woman swapping places in order to understand each other better. The song became the first song to reach No. 1 on the charts 37 years after its original release. Through the series "Stranger Things" it reached a new audience of a younger generation. It featured a Russian balaleika and was actually never performed live in America. The song is a quest for tolerance and understanding, not only between genders but also between races and religions, remembering to respect our differences and use them wisely and respectfully. Beauty should be respected. The most honorable bridge one can build is the bridge to yourself, transcending fear and turning it into light. The piece is an inspiration and is meant to inspire tolerance. The ideas are mine and do not constitute an absolute truth. They are my truth, one truth, and whoever feels inspired by these words are welcome to embrace them.

***

Woman,

you are the womb of the universe,

the spiral center of the galaxy

where stars are born in silence.

From your heartbeat came oceans,

from your tears came rain,

from your laughter came spring.

You carry eternity

the way the moon carries tides.

And man, wandering through history

with torches and wars and lonely songs,

keeps searching for the doorway home

only to discover

it was hidden in your embrace all along.

Sex was never merely hunger.

It was always the bridge.

Two souls dissolving into one another

like rivers entering the sea,

climbing together

that endless Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin sang about

with aching, immortal hope.

For what is love

if not two frightened universes

recognizing themselves

in another pair of eyes?

Mary Magdalene knew it

when she looked at Jesus

not with ownership,

but with sacred tenderness.

Joan of Arc knew it

when the fire could not destroy

the truth burning within her.

Velázquez painted it

in the quiet softness of Venus,

where beauty rests

without shame.

And somewhere Kate Bush

is still Running Up That Hill,

trying to make a deal with God

so man may understand woman,

and woman may understand man.

For perhaps this is the secret:

Man inspires woman

to become more man —

courageous, wild, daring.

Woman inspires man

to become more woman —

gentle, intuitive, tender.

And between them

God smiles quietly,

for genders were never prisons

but puzzle pieces

of one shattered divine mirror.

Maybe we have loved each other before.

In forgotten centuries.

In candlelit castles.

On battlefields.

In Paris rain.

In villages beside the sea.

Perhaps every sudden recognition

between two souls

is memory returning home.

And perhaps God is not only a throne,

nor judgment,

nor fear.

Perhaps God is also inside 

the infinite kiss of a woman,

the hand of a man trembling softly

against her cheek,

the child born from love,

the miracle of two beings

creating a third soul

from tenderness.

And maybe heaven was never only above us. But also within us. Do we know what it's worth? Heaven is also a place on Earth.

Maybe heaven happens

for one impossible moment

when two souls

truly see each other.

Fascinated by differences. 

In love with the journey.