What Love Isn't

The Mystery within...

Seeing what love isn’t can shed light on what love is.  Looking at my part in what isn’t love can turn me around to be more loving.  Dark times create longing and searching for loves light and peace.  Finding others who sense the darkness and long for light can be comforting.  I found such comfort in Parker Palmer’s honesty in his column titled “Bringing Christmas Down to Earth” where he clearly sees what love isn’t.

Lines from “God Never Hurries,” where I quote Henry Fonda and John Caradine in the movie “Grapes of Wrath” revisited me this past week:

"A very young Henry Fonda and John Caradine said so much to me with these lines:

Henry Fonda:

A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a piece of one big

soul that belongs to everyone. Find out what’s wrong and see if

                                           something can be done about it.

John Caradine:

I’ve got nothing to preach about no more. That’s all. I ain’t

so sure of things. My heart ain’t in it. All that lives is holy."

Growing through darkness is what success is all about that make people and countries great.  Opportunity waits.  Together we need tools to do the work of love.  I reviewed my summary of Krista Tippett’s discussion with Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman in my post last week, Evolving Love, and see some tools to repair what love isn’t.  What other tools do you know of to do the work of love?

“What if we searched and shared tools needed for the difficult work of love, more often?” 

Lost?

God is...

Philip Chard, psychotherapist, award winning newspaper columnist, and fine human being, writes the weekly column “Out of My Mind” which runs every Tuesday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  He also graciously wrote the endorsement for my memoir.  In his May 14, 2013 column titled “Finding one’s way is no easy journey” he suggests, “…existential disorientation calls for visiting one’s existential home, which is the natural world.”  Chard’s words transported me back to times when my internal GPS (God Positioning System) helped re-orient me mentally, spiritually and psychologically.  Conveying those special times became my primary goal in writing God Never Hurries.

There was the candlelight walk at a nearby state park on Lake Michigan’s shore …There was special mystery in the dark fall air.  It was as if God was right there.  The leaves were wet soft, and silent under our feet.  As we walked in the black velvet night each step required a little faith….  Then there was the windy winter walk to the valley …As I entered that more gently sloping entrance into the calm valley, I slipped on slick ice under this fresh deep snow.  But it was like falling on a soft white cushion.  A floor of very slippery, but deeply cushioned ice was in much of the valley.  I fell or crawled or sometimes just sat down—moving like a child learning to walk.  I was like a child learning to walk with deeper spiritual and psychological discovery….  And …I rolled back up a large drift at the mouth of the valley that I had rolled over to get to the beach, but before rolling down the other side I stopped at the top to appreciate the brilliant blue sky.  There I decided I needed to have more faith and a lot less fuss and debate with myself…. And I responded to the sweet young outfitter guide’s question as to what I wanted from my wilderness experience—I told Jeremy I just wanted blend into my surroundings.  My body was aching from all the accumulated tension in my back neck and shoulders.  Instinctively I was aching for naturalness….  Every season gave me new and deeper insights that helped me navigate through dark times and brought deep learning. 

Chard concludes his May 14 article suggesting we slow down, practice mindfulness in nature and learn about its ways, and he said it “helps us plant our feet in the real world.”  He ended his column with a quote from the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor who wrote:  “God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.”  I can attest to that.  What if my internal GPS had not been working when I really needed it?