More on Extravagant Love

"I would prefer a thousand mistakes in extravagance of love to any paralysis in wariness of fear."

 ~Gerald C. May

What do you see in this picture? I know that what I saw for many, many years was "the good shepherd" going after "the one lost sheep." It was a picture of Jesus' love for each one of us, my Sunday school teachers explained; it was an illustration of how he would have died for "just Cheryl" if she were the only one on earth with sins that demanded a payment.

Today I no longer see that. I DO see love, though. I don't see a love only a god can have for a human. I DO see the kind of love my Pop Pop showered extravagantly (SHOWERS...still...<tears>) for me. I DO see the kind of love I feel for my kids. It's extravagant. Senseless. Unconscious, sometimes. From somewhere deep inside of me that I KNOW is "the real me."

I don't always show/give this love in this "throw-my-body-over-the-cliff-for-you" spirit. Far from it. It is easier to feel this sort of love toward someone with whom you are falling in love than it is to feel it and show it to someone who has betrayed, neglected or hurt you. It is easier to express when there are chubby arms wrapped around your neck and a soft lisp of, "I wuv you, Mama," from baby lips than it is to express when a ten-year-old is yelling disrespect in your face. It is easier to tearfully declare to a someone who has sworn their eternal love to you than it is to imagine loving the person who has hurt you most in your life.

And yet ... this is the love that the real me feels, deep down. This is the love that I know would (and HAS, at times) bubble up without my choosing it to if I could see the whole picture, feel no fear of rejection or being taken advantage of, and reject the lie my ego would tell me that my love is wasted if the person whom I'm loving doesn't love me back in kind. This is the love that I just insist is IN me. And IN you.

Looking through another peephole...

"It's inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing."

-From Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck

An "a-ha!" moment

This blog post by Jen Lemen struck something deep, deep inside me this morning. I highly suggest you read the whole post, but #7 was particularly emotional for me; just reading it made me feel teary:

"7. Tell the truth about your beautiful, impossible dream. There’s no point in hiding anymore. Everyone already knows deep down. If you say it, there will be a price to pay, but there will also be a path forward and real excitement."

Even attempting to think about what that "beautiful, impossible dream" is for me made me weep. I chatted with my dear friend, Dena, earlier, and we talked about this. I asked her what her "dream" is and she immediately described it, in detail. It was indeed beautiful; hearing it made so much sense. I can absolutely see her doing, being, creating that dream; it fits her perfectly.

But when I tried to think about what my "beautiful, impossible dream" is, I hit a wall.

"I don't know what it is," I told Dena, "and just thinking about it makes me cry tears."

And then this afternoon, I read Dena's collection of meaningful quotes, ideas and thoughts for today that she posts one of daily on facebook. I came across a quote at the very end of her compilation that made me pause, and then tear up.

Here's the quote:

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside of us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our touch, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."  - e.e. cummings

When I read that quote, it hit me: that is a piece of my dream. To BE that person who "reveals" to others what is "valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our touch, sacred to our touch." To BE the person who speaks out the value that I see in those I come into contact with.
 
I'm not sure what "piece" this is in my "beautiful, impossible dream," but it most definitely IS one.

I'll Meet You in the Field

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” ~Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Somehow I know that it's there in that field that I'll find the Tree of Life that Adam and Eve felt "driven away from." The "good" and the "bad" sorting system will collapse and it will just be...us. To imagine the sort of love and connections we could have without that sorting system governing us is stunning. THAT, to me, would be "heaven." To not need to have sorting words in our vocabulary but to instead show ourselves as we truly are and see the beautiful truth of everyone else. And then to simply love one another. That would be home.

Unconditional Love

“The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance. Co-operation which needs consideration is a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.”

-Mohandas Gandhi

What do you think about the above quote? Imagine your friend, who you love very much, is going through a painful time in their life and needs your help. What would you do?

Now imagine your friend has made a series of choices that, in your mind, at least, are exactly why he/she is in the pain, trouble or hardship they are now experiencing. Does that change what you would do?

Let's get more specific. What kind of hardship would your friend have to be going through for you to decide NOT to assist them? Here are a few possibilities that might pop into your head:

-Drug addiction
-Other addiction
-Having an extramarital affair
-Abusing someone close to them
-Breaking the law
-Knowingly hurting someone else

Regardless of what those things are, there are things that those who are close to us can do that would cause us to respond in ways that express our disaproval. We might start by gently telling them we are worried about their behavior/actions/choices. Sometimes we might express our disgust. We might feel we need to exercise "tough love." We may decide that ultimately, we have to back out of the relationship.

But where does "Tough Love" leave off and Judgment, Rejection and Conditional Love begin?

Is it possible that we could actually love without condition...meaning our love doesn't change, no matter what, EVEN IF someone we love is destroying their lives (or even others' lives) right in front of us? Is that love "too unconditional?" Is there such a thing?

One thing is certain: loving under those conditions, and especially loving in a present, there-for-you kind of way would be...well, messy.

But is that when love BECOMES unconditional...right at the point where it gets messy?

What do you think?

One Stitch at a Time

And work at your pattern;
It will come out a rose by and by.
Life is like that –
One stitch at a time taken patiently
And the pattern will come out all right
Like the embroidery.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

I'm for Freedom

“I'm not against anyone's church, religion or politics - I'm 'for' freedom. If anyone's church, religion or politics makes them feel like they have to think, act, or talk a certain way in order to be loved, accepted or protected then that's performance. Which is driven by control. Which is driven by fear. Which is driven by mistrust. There's nothing 'free' about that to me.“ ~Stacey Robbins

Pain

What do you think of this quote from Jim Morrison:

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

*photo by Jordyn R

"A Reason to Keep Pulling"

(excerpt from All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg...buy it here)

"The first memory I have is of a tall blond woman who drags a canvas cotton sack along an undulating row of rust-colored ground, through a field that seems to reach into the back forty of forever. I remember the sound it makes as it slides between the chest-high stalks that are so deeply, darkly green they look almost black, and the smell of kicked-up dust, and sweat. The tall woman is wearing a man's britches and a man's old straw hat, and now and then she looks back over her shoulder to smile at the three-year-old boy whose hair is almost as purely white as the bolls she picks, who rides the back of the six-foot-long sack like a magic carpet.

It is my first memory, and the best. It is sweeter than the recollection I have of the time she sat me down in the middle of a wild strawberry patch and let me eat my way out again, richer than all at the times she took me swimming in jade-colored streams and threw a big rock in the water to run off the water moccasins. It is even stronger than the time she scraped together money for my high school class ring, even though her toes poked out of her old sneakers and she was wearing clothes from the Salvation Army bin in the parking lot of the A&P. It was not real gold, that ring, just some kind of fake, shiny metal crowned with a lump of red glass, but I was proud of it. I was the first member of my family to have one, and if the sunlight caught it just right, it looked almost real.

But it is the memory of that woman, that boy and that vast field that continues to ride and ride in my mind, not only because it is a warm, safe and proud thing I carry with me like a talisman into cold, dangerous and spirit-numbing places, but because it so perfectly sums up the way she carried us, with such dignity. We would have survived on the fifty-dollar welfare check the government decided our lives were worth. The family could have lived on the charity of our kin and the kindness of strangers. Pride pushed her out into the cotton field, in the same way that old terror, old pain squeezed my daddy into a prison of empty whiskey bottles.

I asked her, many years later, if the strap of the sack cut deeper into her back and shoulders because I was there. "You wasn't heavy," she said. Having a baby with her made the long rows shorter, somehow, because when she felt like quitting, when she felt like her legs were going to buckle or her back would break in two, all she had to do was look behind her. It gave her a reason to keep pulling."

Finding Life in a Meadow

If you go as far as you can see,
you will then see enough to go even farther.
- John Wooden

There came a time
when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin

"Never lose an opportunity
to see anything that is beautiful.
It is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face,
every fair sky,
every fair flower."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

As you sit on the hillside,
or lie prone under the trees of the forest,
or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream,
the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
- Stephen Graham

One sees great things from the valley,
only small things from the peak.
- G. K. Chesterton

My father considered a walk among the mountains
as the equivalent of churchgoing.
- Aldous Huxley

"For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower, even from the cliffs of despair."

"I will be the gladdest thing under the sun. I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person,
you know that a man can have no vocation
but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him...
- Albert Camus

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent
and God is shining throughit all the time.
God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything -
in people and in things and in nature and in events...
The only thing is we don't see it...
I have no program for this seeing.
It is only given.
But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
- Thomas Merton

If I know what love is,

it is because of you.

-Herman Hesse