You Do Not Have to be Perfect

You do not have to be perfect.
You do not need to be a star-shiner
polishing your imperfect acts in hope of being chosen
to herald the Nativity.
All you need is to love all of who you are, the longings
and the half-misses, the scattered thoughts and the focused passions,
all you need to do is to walk out into the nighttime air
and breathe,
welcome the vast array of shooting stars
cascading in glory with no idea of where they are going.
You who believe in the greatness of others but not your own,
who fear burning out before you have made your mark,
look closely at Orion and the Pleiades,
constellated stars aligned in space
burning with brilliance,
never altering their position, though the spinning world
will make you believe they are drifting away
disappearing from your sight.
You out there who deny your inherent always-was-enough-ness,
go out, again, night after night
cloudy or starlit,
and greet the galaxies.
Without your star-shiner’s cloth,
powerless to dull or brighten that darkened sky,
go out and receive your gifts:
trajectory and surrender.
When you come to the edge of your evening
will you have seen how the darkness holds the light?
Will you have welcomed
your one, small, meteoric life?