My Daughter’s Wedding

Lungs expand when offered air.
Little sacks collapse with exhalation,
then revive and swell with each inspiration.
Breathing is like love,
the air creates space where none had existed before.

With the core’s churning pressure,
the dried, fragile crust of this
swirling, living planet
erupts with new magma.
Warm, radiant, pushing.
When given half a chance
the lava creates new land where none had existed before.

And with the advance of time, in the endless and ancient
waltz of life and death,
peril and opportunity,
new forms of life, and insistent generations
create fern-covered hills,
ponds pulsing with creatures of all kinds.
Life creates new footing where none had existed before.

And so it is tonight.
I find myself dancing with my daughter,
just arrived from her Huppah.
I gaze into her eyes as if for the first time,
we see each other bejeweled through the refracted light of our shared tears.
And smiles.
She is radiant, kind, masterful, strong and sweet.
I thought I loved her before,
so how is it possible that I am discovering new pockets of love,
new spaces in my heart creating an expanse of adoration
that had not existed before?

is there no limit?
Does love simply flow and grow and flow
forever?

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson is the Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair and professor of philosophy at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies.