Radical love

 A few weeks ago, I got the message to just do good things.  Simple enough.  Powerful though, as an idea as a practice.  Yesterday, the message I heard was to pray without ceasing.  To love without ceasing.  To love always, fully, without restraint.   That all things should know love, not that I should love all things, but that all things should be loved.

I thought about plants and how they are nourished by the other organisms in the soil.  An act of love I do believe.  All things should be loved by whatever can love them.  I could envision this wave of love rippling outward, growing ever larger.  This small thing, the dawning of a life, be in human or carrot or mosquito, being nurtured.  The magic of love and chemistry surround it and it lives as long as it will, be it a moment or years.  And it is loved by whatever can love it.  Sometimes it takes root and grows and sometimes it does not and is ended in the very beginning.  Sometimes it takes root and grows and is cut short before what might have been its natural end.  Sometimes it gets to live a full extent of life and slowly comes to an end.  The love this being has received is not diminished by the length of its life.  The love it has received cannot be compared to the love received by another and sometimes, the love received is from the same giver or givers.  But still it cannot be compared one to the other.

Let's say the love is a visible thing.  Like a wave radiating from the giver to the recipient.  And the love received by the give can be traced back and back and back.  The givers take many forms both alike and vastly different from the recipient.  Echos of love going back to the first single cell.  And then traveling the other way into the future, the capacity for love never diminishing.  And because there are vast multitudes of givers, from what we consume as an act of love from the carrot for instance, which gathered love from the soil and the organisms therein, even if one source is no longer available, there is another source, always.

This idea that we are ever alone is really a misconception or misperception of the truth.  Obviously, we are not required to see or acknowledge the gifts of love that we receive with each breath. I drink the water or eat the carrot and do not think of what has come together to make that happen.  All of the energies that have come together in order for life to even exist.  I don't really think of water as a life form, but it is certainly required for all life forms to exist, so it should count.  Same thing with air.  That is a rabbit hole I am not quite prepared to go down.  The carrot, tree, mosquito, human carbon-based life form is quite rabbit hole enough for now. 

I think humans have grown oblivious to love and our need for it and how we give it.  We fight about what is right and what is wrong and forget to love one another.  Even if we don't like one another.  So much anger and bitterness everywhere I look.  So looking inside myself to see the love that had to manifest for life to exist at all, that love is any type of chemical cooperation, I find myself  blown away by the magnitude.  It requires nothing by receiving on the part of the recipient.  I look outside and see the sunlight on the petals of the cherry tree and the wind rustling the leaves.  So much is happening there and I can ignore it all.  But if the sunlight is love to the tree and the wind is bringing another type of love and the insects which visit the petals when the sun is warm and the winds are not too strong is yet another kind of love and the rain that fell earlier that fed the roots and all of the organisms that live in the soil around those roots and that are tending to one another through fungi which help facilitate communication between plants.  It just goes on and on.  

Right now, in my human world, people are taking sides over abortion.  To end a life before it has a chance, to thin the carrot patch in order to let some grow bigger and stronger and healthier, some of the carrot seedlings are pulled.  Those seedlings are still loved by the soil organisms and the rain and the sun. There is not room for all of them.  The plant knows this when it sets seed, that some of the seeds will grow and others will not.   Some will feed birds or turn back into the soil as nutrition for another time. What it received during its lifetime is not diminished by its end, nor is it less valuable as food for something else.  To those lives that were ended, we are grateful, for it allowed another life to thrive, to have room to grow.  Are the seedlings promised?  I don't suppose that they are, no more than a life is promised other than to make the most of what you were given. Some lovely lives are ended early.  Many lovely lives are.  But this does not make them invaluable.  Of course not.

Not everything gets to choose to love.  I don't suppose the organisms in the soil actively choose to feed the seedling.  But they still nourish.  Some things take the life of another thing in order to feed itself.  Perhaps that is part of the balance, like the thinning of the carrot patch.

I feel like I am at the door looking in and I can't quite get my mind around the idea of conscious love.  But I feel strongly that I figure this out.  That I love actively.  That I pray for my neighbors, that I love them and tend to them, to my human neighbors, to my non -human neighbors, that I act consciously, to be aware of the impact I have.  Yes, it is hard to know how to take a step forward, but if I at least give gratitude to all that nurtures me, I am starting somewhere.

Easter refresh

 Today is Easter. While I am not a practicing Christian, I have to acknowledge the lessons I learned from that faith. Love one another is a big one. For me, Easter is renewal, a way to hit refresh if you will. I was thinking about all of the horrible things that were happening leading up to Christ's crucifixion. Humans are capable of some really atrocious behaviors. It is hard for me to sit with the idea of forgiveness and the amount of compassion that would take. It is actually unfathomable. But people do it, even in my lifetime.

Today, I push reset. I will work toward being more loving and forgiving of myself, so that I may be more loving and forgiving of others.

I had a moment the other day where I felt the impact of the gift of my life. I don't really know how to explain it. I often take life, my life in particular, for granted. There have been many instances that I either wanted it to end or that I would do nothing to fight for it if it came down to that. Not all that long ago, I decided that I wanted to live my life, really live it, be awake for it. And then the other day, I saw that this life is a gift that not every carbon-based life form gets to experience. I heard what I was supposed to do with this gift - Just Do Good Things. That is it. The huge life lesson I have been waiting for.

Just Do Good Things.

I haven't always. I do not expect I always will. But I can always try. When I fall short, I can make amends the best I am able and try again.

Sexism

There are some people I know that refer to themselves as color blind.  They see no race, gender or ethnic differences.  I wonder at this idea and it bothers me because I want to see people's race, gender or ethnicity, not to judge them, but to see their history, their story about how they came to be in this place, in this time, what makes them who they are as they evolve from their family of origin and have decided to define themselves now.

I live in a world that is still defined by racial, gender and ethnic identity.  And I get so excited when I see the stereotypes turned on their ears.  I drove past a big box hardware store tonight and watched a man carrying something large and cumbersome in one arm and holding the hand of a little girl in rain boots with the other.  It made me smile and wish that this was not an unusual sight.

It is a gut deep wish that little girls go to the hardware store with their dads and learn the ins and outs of tools and machinery and all the things that go with it.  That they are not afraid to get dirty, to learn, to bust their knuckles on hard metal and find cool tools that help them be more successful with putting things together or tearing them apart.

It is also a gut deep wish that little boys are encouraged to be creative and thoughtful and compassionate.  That they are not afraid to speak their minds or analyze their feelings and respond from a visceral level.

There has been a huge uptick in gender fluidity and I can't help but wonder if it is in response to the labels and stereotypes we inflict upon our children, even when we intend not to.  It also seems that as children question the roles they have been given, they can reject those roles so fully that they can no longer play in their original roles.  For girls, they must reject the pink and frilly and only embrace the genderless.  I don't know if boys seek androgyny to give them the space to discover themselves in the same way.  It seems that androgyny really equates to a more masculine appearance and behavior than an actual neutral one.

There was a young man working at a pizza place who was wearing makeup.  I wanted to acknowledge it, tell him it looked nice.  But I didn't.  At the moment I wanted to celebrate with this young man with his willingness to defy social norms, I also wanted to normalize it, make it no big thing.  I should not celebrate the makeup wearing young man or the father with the little girl at the hardware store.  These need to be normal events, not cause for celebration.  It should be expected that people behave openly and in support of one another.  We should be color blind.  Shouldn't we?  But we aren't.  We still say "Boys will be boys"or "That wasn't very ladylike".

I am confused.  I want to celebrate those who are willing to live out loud as the world should be, but by doing so, I point out how things are still lacking.   There is an adorable ad on the TV these days of a man playing and singing with his little girl.  Take time to be a dad is the message.  What a lovely thing.  Why do we still need to make advertisements encouraging this?  Why is love the unexpected experience?

On social media, there is often a meme about how when women are sick, they still take care of the household and how men do not.  I went to work sick and I still tried to do the things that I do around the house.  I was sick a long time, probably in no small part due to the fact that I did not take the time to rest. In our quest to be superwomen, we emasculate the men in our lives and mock them in order to empower ourselves or to be self righteous.  That can't be right.  The problem I have in asking for help is my problem, not my husbands. But yet I want that little girl in rain boots to be given the opportunity to be herself.  I don't think I want her to do it all so that no one else has to help her.  I want her to be able to find out what fires her up, not necessarily how to be strong by making others weak.

What I think it comes down to is the idea that things are either one of two options.  You are this or you are that.  Our world is changing, becoming less polarized in its thinking, but we are not there yet.  We are trying things on for size, shifting the status quo.  It really is an amazing time to be alive, though hard to find perspective sometimes.  If I am going to celebrate the breaking of stereotypes, do I have to do it at the expense of existing stereotypes?  Is there room for both? Could there be more possibilities we haven't even considered yet?

Initially written and not published January 10, 2017

Connected

My dogs woke me up early this morning barking at phantoms in the back yard.  I am sure they saw them, but they time I arrived, they had fled, so they may as well have been phantoms.  It was too early to get up early, so I returned to bed and settled my brain as best I could.  It is those thoughts that I wish to share now.

What if we were all connected?  Closer than siblings, but something akin to that.  What if the killer and the one killed were our family or even a part of us, some part of a collective?  What if Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un were all part of each of us?  We would not be responsible for their words and actions, but somehow still obligated to them.

The Episcopal liturgy again resonates in my head, Love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a living sacrifice for the whole world.  I heard and said those words so many times, they really lost their meaning.  Especially the sacrifice part.  Are we any kinder to one another than we were 2000 years ago?  Uh, no.  Sorry, but that sacrifice seems wasted on the likes of humanity.  But perhaps we are still charged with the task of recognizing our bonds to one another and to the planet.

We don't have to like any of it.  But we are tasked with it just the same.  I don't think it means to stand idly by.  I think we can still be appalled by the behavior of others and work to right wrongs, but going about it with the same energy that we would to change our own behavior.  Eat the salad because you ate the hamburger earlier.  Don't hate the hamburger or the fact that you ate it, that is useless energy.  Accept it, move on, work for something better.  Acknowledge and move on.  Be better yourself first.  Recognize your connection to everyone and everything else.  Accept and connect. 

 
You can't change me, I can't change you.  But we can love one another.  And recognize that we would not wish for the suffering of the other, so we can extend a little effort to ease the burden of the other.  Martin Luther King Jr said "they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Now take that a little further and focus on not the behaviors or skin color or any other external wrappings and look only at energy and see what connects us.  The air we breathe connects us to one another.  What if that is love?  What if that is what we are responsible for?

Could I love as I breathe?  Could I share love as I share my viruses and bacteria?

Initially written and not published, May 24, 2017

Contemplation of division and derision

 I think we are having global growing pains.  Actually, I have no idea what the rest of the world is facing in regard to the response to Covid-19.  I used to hear about people dying. That might be a non-issue here in the United States.  People are still dying, but I think maybe we just don't care.  Hospitals are full (again).  People are screaming "Get vaccinate!" while others scream back "You can't tell me what to do!" People are willing to ridicule and shame those with whom they disagree.  It is baffling.

Weave in societal pressure about how people can protest (do not lose control is the takeaway) and the definition of life no matter what and the conclusion that our climate is indeed changing, and we will all have to get on board to make personal sacrifices to slow it down, let alone reverse it and we are in a pickle.

"Don't tell me what to do."  I think I can safely say we have all felt this at some point or other. "Tell me what I can do to help." is equally well known. Traversing the landscape between these two points feels fraught with danger.  The ever-slippery slope.

The most comfortable thing is to draw those who think like you/me/us closer and closer so that the world is a known place. It is reassuring in this space of familiar thought. We draw the line in the sand and unless you believe what I believe, you are wrong and deserve the consequences you face. Darwin Awards come to mind. Have a good laugh at those who suffer because of the choices they make.

And it increases the distance between us and them making it ever more difficult to come together. Mockery. Vindictiveness. Hatred. What are the consequences of that?

Initially written, but not posted September 27, 2021

Fate

 I do not like the idea of fate, that I cannot set my own course and take advantage of the experience therein.  But I do not know what to call it when seemingly out of nowhere, people, things and experiences all seem to converge to teach me what I have been waiting to learn. I have been collecting information on mindfulness and intention, but in little bits here and there.  Only lately have those bits and bobs of information started to coalesce.   Like little streams coming together and together and together to form something more formidable. It is only now that it is everywhere that I look that I start to wonder about the journey I am finding myself on.

  In the past, I have gone "all in" when it came to church and religious experience in order to belong and to assuage loneliness and awkwardness and other social shortcomings.   I had decided that belonging was more important than any other thing and dismissed my reservations and intuitive knowledge. At some point, I decided that my relationship with religion was inauthentic and had to leave.  It was not an easy decision as it had been part of my life for so long, but I felt like I was simply going through the motions and God (The universe, the Divine, etc) was worth more than simply faking it.  I set religion aside and waited for understanding.  In my waiting, and idea came to me that perhaps witch was another name for priestess.  

I have been in search of teachers.

In the last few months, I have been working to transform my yard into a witch's garden.  I am a young witch, in terms of practice, and am still figuring out what that means.  But my intention is to grow things that would be of use to myself and my neighbors to aid us in living our best life, balanced in the physical, emotional and spiritual.

One day, while working in the yard, I lit a fire and said a prayer of blessing for all who visit my yard, that they know joy, health and abundance in all things. A felt the presence of magnitude, of those who have come before and are guides to those with the ears to listen.  I was overwhelmed.  This can't be real, I thought.  Then two eagles circled overhead, not high in the sky, maybe 40 feet or so, like they were looking for me as they glided along.  My prayer included anyone the smoke reached, so I felt that perhaps the smoke blessed them too.  I have not seen them since that day, though we do have eagles that live near here.  The feeling I had, between the eagles and the sense of others walking beside me, was remarkable.

I have been picking up books at work on the healing power of foods.  I have history of emotional eating, so eating with intention for my well-being is different.  I have a good sense of nutrition, but I have not put it together as an act of self-love. Over and over, these recipe books are filled with words of love and encouragement, not just recipes.  I knew that I had been missing an important component during my last go round with weight loss.  As an emotional eater, I already knew how to eat my feelings. Now, I am learning how to be with my feelings and use food to nurture and tend my heart and soul.

While I was driving to work, I was growing restless listening to the radio.  Most radio is too aggravating for me, so I listen to books or to classical music.  But I decided to take a peek into podcasts for a new companion on my drive to and from work.  I found An Herbal Diary. which is all about using herbal medicine in food and in tea.  Then I came home and opened a book I had purchased, called Kale and Caramel, a cookbook using herbs as medicine.  I had listened to a lecture a few weeks back on healing herbs and how foods feed our microbiome, which in turn, take care of our bodies. 

The books, the lectures, the garden could all be coincidental things that overlap in my desire for growth on a mystical level.  But I recall the feeling of multitude, of a sacred community ready to guide me in my understanding.  I feel compelled to wander this path, to be vulnerable to it, to be present.  I am afraid, believe me, ready to dismiss everything as a figment of my imagination and get back to life as I know it, drab as it may be.  I don't want to do that.

Yesterday, I made my first meal with love as my intention.  I prayed as I washed my hands that the foods I prepared would be a blessing to all who partook.  That we would be nourished and better able to be mindful of the needs of others, that the gift of life that was given from the lamb and the fruits and vegetables would not be wasted or taken for granted, but for a greater good.

I used thyme as the medium.  I chose it because it was available in early spring, and I felt drawn toward it.  I looked it up after and read that thyme opens one up to the spirit, to the mystical.  Perfect.  The meal was multifaceted with each component containing the herb in either dried or fresh form. I do not know if my guests were able to take in what I was offering by way of magic, but they were at least amenable to the idea.

This all feels like a leap of faith.  I have been acknowledging my fear in being open to the idea there is more to my life than what it appears at first glance.  After being present with my fears for a bit, I was putting things away and came across a candle that I had purchased last week.  I bought it because some of the proceeds went to rehabilitation of women who had been victims of human trafficking. When I looked at it, the first thing I noticed was the scent, Palo Santo, which has a long spiritual tradition and on the candle itself was the word, Courage. So I am leaping and ready to be present for whatever comes next.

The closing of a chapter

Today, my youngest child will graduate from high school.  For some families, this is a monumental achievement.  For others, it is a matter of course.  If I am being honest, for me, it is both.

I can remember bits of my own graduation.  There are pictures to help, but I can recall the blue of our gowns, lining up, walking together, the folding chairs, the speeches, but not the words of those speeches, only that they gave them, the band playing endless repetitions of Pomp and Circumstance. The feeling of being at both an ending and a beginning still resonates.

As a parent, I am proud and relieved and again I have that feeling of an ending and a beginning. I am melancholy for the nagging to do homework, to practice the instrument, to do their chores.  I know that in a matter of months, my house will have a vacancy.  

It is hard to put into words what my kids mean to me.  I hear their laughter.  Even if they are not laughing with me.  I smell their bodies, both clean and filthy.  I know the curve of their cheek and what it will feel like to touch.  Though it has been many years since I covered them with kisses, I know that too.  

When I get angry with my kids, it is a fast burn.  Far more often it is an irritation that passes.  We can talk about it.  I trust them.  I believe in their value as humans.   I love them always, even when I may not like them fully (this happened more in the early years).  I learn from them and am thrilled when they share parts of themselves with me.  I strived to support their decisions, even when I did not agree with their choices.

One day, not all that long ago, my youngest was struggling with their confidence when it came to driving a car.  I climbed into the back seat so when they drove I could be there purely for support.  I silently chanted, "I believe in you.  I believe in you.  I believe in you." for the entire ride.  I did not teach.  I did not offer a second set of eyes.  My job in that moment was to just encourage.  It was a powerful moment for me.

I think that will be my job over the next few years as each one steps more fully into the sea of adulthood.  To be the one to cheer, to listen, to reflect as they weigh their decisions.  To remind them that I love them and am proud of them and that I believe in them.  I also have a job that will be less mom, a different kind of wife, and more me in my own right.  Of course, that has been shifting over the years, ever since I went to my first book club meeting and was not a wife nor a mother, but just a person who read a book.  Employment can do that for many, but my work has always been secondary to my family.

I admit, I am apprehensive, because it is a change.  But I am not afraid of it.  And I am excited about this new chapter too.  I am looking forward to spending time with my husband and discovering who we are as a couple rather than just as parents.  I am looking forward to seeing what I do with my life as I move toward friendship with my kids.

Happy graduation.  The world is my oyster.  It will be shaped by world events as well as personal events and will always be subject to my choices of love or fear.  Be brave.