I Love You

I Love You May 29 2010


Three little words – I love you! I love you! I love you!

They are the most important words – no need to improvise, create.

They can’t be said too often,

And each time they’re said, they’re new – never repeating what was said before.

They reflect the feeling of this moment –

I love your crinkly smile, your ready wit, the sparkle in your eyes,

Your gentleness and kindness, the beauty of your soul…

I love you in an endless wealth of ways –

Always newly known and deeply felt.

I love you! I love you! I love you! -- now, again, forever.



Reflection

Love is such a joy! Each person -- each creature-- is a spark of God – reflecting in ways we can appreciate different aspects of the infinite Creator. I can think of no better way to spend a day than to revel repeatedly in the joy of loving, and – like a carillon chime – to peal forth our joy in those three important words – I love you!

Eden

Eden May 29 2010


And God cast them from the Garden.

They lost God’s love.

Losing love – the hardest hurt,

The truest Hell.

Loveless, babies wither, grownups weep.

Without love, I live in turmoil --

Sleep deprived, feeling ill, hating others and myself, tired, lifeless.

Deprived of love, I shrivel like a tender flower in a drought –

Dried up, wrinkled, gray, before I die my many deaths.

I seek out your love, my darling – heliotropic -- drawn by you:

your smile, the pleasure in your eyes,

Your gentle voice, your soothing hands,

Your compelling spirit force.

You nourish and revitalize my soul – your love my nectar.

In trust, I open up, bloom, let myself be tender, give to you the power to hurt or heal.

I learn the might of love to beautify or trample

And give my heart to you withal – witness to your perfect God-love splendor.



Reflection

Building a relationship is definitely not for the faint of heart. The reward is bliss, a more transcendent connection with God, who is love. The challenge is to rid my self ( my ego) of fear – to trust, to be willing to feel hurt, and to continue trusting and loving, knowing that any perceived lack of love is a delusion. God cannot not love. God IS love. Love draws us to each other, and steadily awaits our enlightenment, our acceptance, our understanding, and our willingness to bask in and transmit its awesome light. We are God’s gift to each other. I am grateful beyond words for this gift of ever-flowing love.

Memories of Place

Memories of Place May 25 2010


A beloved house where once we lived--

Its trees, its drive,

Its empty rooms with traces still of long gone memories –

Ghostly wisps of past hours wafting through.

We drive up, we look, we feel the pain of loving still this place.

We walk again the ground, neglected now,

Where once our spirit dwelt in peace and love,

Where once our family ran and played and laughed and argued,

Where once we planted, built, and prayed.

We are spirits from another plane – from timeless, formless space,

Yet our molecules have sunk deep roots into the earth where we have lived and loved,

Entwining heart and body with that soil, that grass, the fiber of that place.

We leave behind so many threads of love – elastic – binding us though we may stretch them thin.

It’s thus that we leave heartprints on the earth wherever we have been,

And feel the earthprints on our souls.



Reflection:

Today I accompanied a friend who was revisiting a home she loved and had left behind. My friend’s attachment to this place was still palpable, years after she had left. Obviously a portion of her spirit dwelt still within that space, upon that ground.

Today I had also learned that the people who had bought the house I had just left were starting to tear out the part of that place I loved the most – cutting down trees and eradicating the wild areas to plant a lawn.

These conjoined experiences, on the same day, have made me go back in spirit to the different places I have loved on the earth and to which I have felt bonded over the decades of my life – from the fields, streams, and Atlantic water of Padanaram, where I spent an important portion of my childhood; to the rolling hills and brushy woods of northern Rhode Island, where I lived for three years as a nun; to the hardpan soil and mine-pocked trails of Old Mines, Missouri, where I wandered in the woods and scratched tiny garden patches into pure clay; to the bracing, cool Pacific breeze and restless ripples of San Francisco Bay; to the majestic pine and hardwood forests of the North Carolina Piedmont – the place I now live. My heart ‘s memory remains entwined with the earth, the air, the trees and grass of each of these earthly homes. When I return to them, I feel their unique magnetic pull signaling my ongoing relationship to each place, even after I have moved away.

As we live longer, we understand better our unity with every person and every place. With every love, we exchange elements of ourself with the beloved. In so doing, we grow ever larger, ever more connected; We ARE more.

Nurture

Nurture May 9 2010

People pause today to sing their mother’s praises –

How she held them, fed them, watched them,

How they learned to love from her,

How she led them gently into earth’s delights.


They’re the fortunate.


Some babies have to scrape for love.

They find it in the hearts of other women,

Surviving, love-starved, as do street kids seeking scraps of food.

As I join in celebrating mothers on this yearly day,

I pray for those whose moms are ill, or dead, or otherwise inapt

To give their children mother love.

I pray that God will give to all his orphaned ones

The love and nurturing they need to learn their beauty,

Trust their worth,

Know their glorious souls, and find deep joy while in this life.

Young or old, we all need mothering.

Blessed are those who nurture others – they shall shine as stars forever.


Reflection

It’s Mother’s Day. Today, I feel separated from the general sentimentality. I realize, again,  that I can’t celebrate my mother’s nurturing care. She was disappointed in me. She was  also ill and depressed. She had no empathy, nor even common sense for caring for a baby. I felt alone and abandoned, from birth. I felt defective, unworthy, unacceptable.

This start has affected my whole life. It created the framework within which I have struggled to accept myself, to enjoy being who I am. My grandmother, my teachers (nuns teaching in Catholic schools), an older spinster who worked humbly as a priests' housekeeper, and the librarian in the small town library where I grew up were my adult friends and supporters. I confided in them, and knew, from their welcome and their support, that I was potentially lovable. They gave me hope. By default, they played the role of surrogate mothers, and I honor their memories today and express my gratitude for the love they brought into my life. 

 I’m not alone in this situation. Many other people’s mental and emotional stability through childhood was preserved by the love of neighbors, teachers, aunts or uncles, grandparents – other grownups who were not our biological mothers, and  who provided real  love -- essential spiritual and emotional nourishment for a child's spirits. On Mother’s Day, it seems appropriate to love and appreciate, along with our mothers, those other adults whose affection helped us to develop a greater reservoir of love to share when we would be grown up. 

. This day should really be called “Raised by a Village Day.”