460, QDSh LIHVH, means “Set apart for god.”

Rapture, n. A snatching up, as by a vision or a god. The only way out except for death. Ecstasy.

Render, v. To give, to melt.
Render, n. One who tears apart, fury and talons, a taker.
(These two are not different except in the minds of grammarians, who know neither to give or to take)

Surrender, v. To give most thoroughly.

A rabbit, the shadow of the seizer mantling it, knows rapture the moment talons tear its skin and the world drops away—one first and final flight, the render’s beak now merely a fact that follows. Bones, fallen from the aerie, melt back into earth.

To be taken by a god: what is that but rapture? To be caught up by beating wings, those burning eyes: To be veiled from the world of washing and weaving by a shining cloud, all the ties that bind falling away: what is that but to be rendered, to surrender oneself, to be a sacrifice given to the sky?

Giving up these words is an act of surrender, an act of rapture. What have I given? Much more than words: I speak from my burning heart. An offering on an altar, a sacrifice. Ego writhes and twists and tries to get away from the fact: it is a pleasure to be taken, to melt, to give and disappear.

“…For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.”

But these words: Render. Rapture. To tear and pierce and devour is also rapturous; to give this gift is also a joy, bitter and sweet and salty hot. When the heavens part and the chosen one feels the Presence mantling it, melting it, who feels more pleasure? To bury one’s teeth, one’s beak, in soft entrails, to tear flesh from bone! Giving no thought, forgetting all restraint, taking thoroughly as one would like to be taken: a god, a beast!

The oldest gods, on cave walls and pyramid scrolls, are shown as beasts or as beast-headed. Only later did this truth get blinded by light, deafened by harps, dead, ungiving. Life unto life, taker and taken, eater and feast.

Samson the wild man killed a lion; later, he found a beehive built in its ribs, dripping with honey. He riddled the Philistines: “Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness.” They, like eunuch grammarians, could not understand until Delilah, who had felt his force and knew his weakness, snatched the secret from him.

Secrets, those things that set us apart: What else could we ever give?