Would It Help

Worry.  “Are you worried,” I ask myself.  My reply, “would it help?”  Answer – “Never.  It never helps to worry.” Que sera sera.  Whatever will be will be.  The world is not ours to see.  Que sera seat

 

 

As I Soften

As I soften, I realize life is so much more than the effort I put into it.  As I soften, I realize that love is all that matters.  As I soften, I am coming to love myself as I do my husband, my children, my grandchildren and my friends, treating myself as the greatest love of my life.  As I soften, I feel a tenderness toward myself and others.  I am cultivating a deeper appreciation of the differences that, rather than separating us, actually draw us into communion.  As I soften, I am listening to the other’s Soul rather than just hearing the words. As I soften, I have less fear and more joy.  I do not want to die, but I accept its ultimate inevitability.  I am, as we all are, infinite and, at the same time, mortal.

““We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.”  John O’Donohue

As soften, any illusion of a perfect world or perfect health falls away.  What is left you may ask?  The mystery of life filled with wonder, intimacy and compassionate forgiveness.

forgiving myself

Lying in bed last night, waiting for the blanket of sleep to wrap its comfort around me, I noticed an almost rigid tension engulfing my body.  This was a feeling I did not want to carry forward into my future.  With each new exhalation, I envisioned my rigid being melting, releasing all holding, surrendering and letting go of all fear. Even now, as I write, I can feel my shoulders drop, my arms lengthen and my heart lift.  The next thing I remember is waking up this morning amazed that I was able to fall into the darkness.

In today’s meditation, I recognized a similar holding pattern, a pushing against the tragedy of reality, a desire to pretend that a perfect life is possible, that it just such a life only requires a gallant effort.  In her interview with the poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue, Krista Tippett explored the meaning life, of love and beauty.  John reflected on times he had sitting at the bedside of they dying and in particular with those who had lived staunch, unrelenting lives. John said that after two or three days he noticed these people literally softened and became visibly more radiant.  When Krista asked how he would explain this phenomenon, John said the dying person realized the way he/she had been living could not serve them now – that holding on and pushing away from the darkness only served to separate them from the light.

Annie Dillard describes just such a realization: “In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.

Today I set an intention to notice when I am holding tension, when I am pushing away from the harshness of reality.  I choose to forgive myself and all others and most especially I forgive life for all its incongruences, its injustices, and its inherenttragedies.  I surrender into the unified field of love, “the house of belonging” -David Whyte