Love Never Fails

1 Cor 13:8

Not the equivalent of “Hope is for suckers.”

Hope, I will agree, is often a lofty, unrealistic, weak cop-out. I’ll just sit here and hope instead of standing up and DOING something.

Love is real. Love is action. Love stands up to fight, sits down to comfort, walks hand in hand, stirs the pot of chili, folds the clothes, goes to work to bring home the bacon, plays catch, reads a story, listens to the wind in the trees, reads, thinks, watches, connects. Love does the very best it can, then trusts. Love loves, despite appearances.

Love never fails.

Choosing Love

When I was little I thought the opposite of love was hate.

When I got older I realized that the opposite of love is fear.

Now I think that there is no opposite to love. Life is unending struggle, and we can choose to love anyway.

Love as a way to embrace life.

Lettuce Away!

I loved it last year when my husband would go out on the deck to pick some lettuce for the lunch he was packing himself. Thinking of him eating homegrown, organic lettuce in his lunch, which he might eat really far from home, covering some news story that was stressing him out and making him believe even more than he already does that the human race is f***ed… it makes me feel like I might be contributing to the good of the world.

Maybe he will taste hope. Maybe he will taste the love of a wife, the warm care of the sun, the solid affection of the dirt, the tasty freshness of lettuce grown on your own porch.

Maybe it will be reflected in his story, which many will read, and the love will make it through the labyrinth, somehow, and feed the world.

Such tiny seeds. Such big dreams.

NOT lettuce, obviously, but I am reusing the big black containers... also I like to remember my basil...

Live For This

A Kiss Amidst the Chaos

Two Beauties, No Beast

Cooler Than Thou, But Still My Baby

Selfless Service, Unconditionally

The Hua Hu Ching, as written by Lao Tzu and translated by Ni, Hua-Ching, states very clearly throughout the text that we are to serve the world selflessly and unconditionally:

One who practices virtue and selflessness should not hold any particular idea in his mind about how to fulfill his virtue, for virtue is the very nature of one’s being. One should always be willing to assist others selflessly and unconditionally by offering one’s skills and achievements to serve them. One should be willing to give away the things one cherishes most or even offer one’s life to assist others. One should not restrict one’s service by distinctions of color, nationality, family or social relationships, sensory perceptions, or any other relative condition. To restrict the ways in which one would render service to others to suit one’s personal preference is potentially harmful. If one relates to others and serves them only according to his own design, it is as if he has entered the darkness and can see nothing. By chance he may help some people, but he may also injure others. However, if one does not limit himself by imposing special terms on his serving others, he is like someone with good vision who enjoys the brightness and sees clearly. His influence is purely positive.

One Love.

Love the One in All.

Can we do what’s in front of us but keep in mind the big picture simultaneously?

Sharing

Can you imagine a world of unconditional selflessness?

Can you imagine yourself participating? Agent of Love? Engaged indiscriminately?

Grandpa’s Fruit Tree

My teenagers hate it when I try to share a story from my past. Yesterday I was trying to tell my 19 year old about how as a kid I had records with story books so I could listen to Heidi and Mary Poppins and such. She could barely be bothered to look at me and as soon as I paused she left the room.

I was immediately reminded of my Grandma’s face that day when I was maybe thirteen years old and she tried to get me to try a peach ( I think it was a peach – it’s extra-damning that I can’t even remember that detail) from a tree that my deceased Grandpa had planted years before. As a kid I despised almost every kind of fruit, and for her to be practically begging me to take one bite of some stupid gross fruit just seemed mean. Hooray, the man I barely remember grew some nasty stuff I hate, why are you torturing me with it?

I can still see the desperation turning to pain in her eyes as she realized I wasn’t going to even pretend to nibble the peach.

Now I know how long it takes to cultivate fruit trees. Now I know how profound it is that a person can reach across time and space with the literal or figurative fruits of their labor, extending their love even beyond the grave by the thoughtful and loving things they did with their lives. She was trying to teach me this, wanting me to participate in this miracle, wanting to see that their years of hard work for posterity was truly going to nourish the generations to come.

Not that this compares with my stupid stories about listening to 45’s. I just remember my own disgust when I see it mirrored in my child’s face, in her refusal to even humor me for a couple minutes. In her self-centered ignorance about what it means for the past and the future to be connected in a meaningful embrace.

That I can only completely understand what her eyes were saying from this distance, when the peach and she and my Grandpa are all long gone, makes me feel like the biggest fool ever.

How Much Negativity is Normal?

First thing this morning, I roll out of bed after that jerk alarm clock so rudely woke me up, stumble into my daughter’s room to wake her for school, and before I’ve even had a sip of coffee I am confronted with this:

The previous evening we had had our (unfortunately) usual conflict over homework and bathing. Evidently it had hit her pretty hard, to generate such a sad response.

First, if I might be so callous as to point out the positive aspects of her letter:

1. She wrote something without being ordered, cajoled, threatened or bribed! Writing being one of the things we had argued about yesterday evening.

2. The lines of communication between the unloved daughter and the monster Mama seem to be pretty open, so that’s a good thing.

3. She has apparently learned my secret weapon (the guilt trip) well enough that she was able to turn it back on me. A+ and four gold stars for that one!

4. Her cleverness seems to know no bounds – notice how she puts a witty, guilt-inducing spin on the standard closing of “Love, So&So.” Pure genius!

Now to the negative. I know that I, for one, felt this exact way from about age 5 until age just a couple of minutes ago, and I fully expect the feeling to recur any minute. Is this my personal neurosis that my poor daughter has either genetically inherited or otherwise picked up from my toxic emotional environment?

Or does everyone go through this as a normal stage of growing up?

On the one hand, I think it is natural for every parent to want to cultivate and maintain the health and happiness of their child. What better satisfaction is there than to see pure joy upon that sweet little face?

On the other hand, without some trials in life, we would be fluffy, weak and pathetic creatures. To allow a child to feel a serious, profound connection to reality, even though sometimes that involves discomfort, is to allow a child to grow as a genuine person and, eventually, to become a capable, functioning adult.

I think especially in the Attachment Parenting world, we are prone to err on the side of eliminating all possibility of frustration, sadness and discomfort in the name of physical, emotional and mental health.

So is this letter an unpleasant but expected sight on the parenting journey, or is it, as she intended it and as I intended for my parents, a no-holds-barred condemnation of the quality of that journey?

All I know right now is, she ventures further away all the time as she grows and explores the world, and that’s natural. I hope that every time she returns to my embrace, she feels the warmth and affection that I’ve always had for her, and always will.

Who Comes to Us in our Dreams?

When we pass the night in our sleeping fantasies, do we really get to see people who have passed on?  I have to say yes.  To awake with the solid certainty that I have been in the presence of a loved one is a feeling I cannot question.  If somehow it is just an illusion, then I will gladly remain behind that curtain.

Many years ago I lost a partner to a drug overdose.  We’d been together for a few intense, sometimes violent months. Beneath the storm of our external relationship there was a deep, true connection that could not be severed.

His goals in life were to be the next Great American Poet and to make sure he never ran out of beer.  My goals were to write the Great American Novel and to get him to quit drinking.  Something we had in common was that we wanted to have a child together.

On September 29th, 1995, I learned that he had died the previous evening of a heroin overdose.  That night, after finally passing out from the exhaustion of crying my soul out, I dreamed that we were in each other’s presence again.  I told him we needed to make love again, to try to make our baby.  He just smiled a really big, peaceful, joyful, knowing smile, an expression that clearly said, “Don’t worry about it,”  and hugged me.  As we embraced there was no boundary between us, where his arms ended and mine began.

On October 13th I discovered that I was pregnant.

In the last week I had a dream about my Grandma who died in December of 2009.  In the dream she was laying in a bed, curled up facing away from me.  Somehow I knew that when she turned around, she might have any kind of face, even the most nightmarish rotting flesh from a horror movie (and I avoid that genre for just that reason).  But I knew that it was my Grandma, no matter what she ended up looking like, so I curled up behind her, just to be near her.  As she turned around we both sat up to face each other —  and she was very young, early 20s, the age I imagine she would choose to be if she were given the option.  She was glowing with joy.  She somehow morphed into a young man, or he came on the scene and the focus shifted away from her, but however it happened, I knew in that moment I would be granted a wish.  I immediately begged with tearful sobs to be healed of my poisonous anger, the explosive frustration that attacks me and the people I love all too frequently.  (As you may know, anger is something I’ve struggled with for a long time, such as in this earlier post.)

Well, since then I’ve had the same frequency of outbursts as usual, but yesterday at the thrift store I found a book called “Anger” by Thich Nhat Hahn.  It seemed to be a little gift from the universe, a little push in the right direction (hopefully.)

I don’t know where the certainty is that I’ve really seen the deceased person.  As I say, it may be wishful thinking, it may be a foolish desire to hang on to something I’ve lost, but no matter what, I , who am pretty open to critical analysis and alternate explanations, refuse to doubt.

Using the Negative

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” — Kenji Miyazawa

Lao Tzu says that we must feed the good and the bad will wither and die.  This approach feels right to me, as I see so many people stuck in the “bad,” whether it is being trapped by worry or feeding negative fantasies until they come true or even talking obsessively about the “devil” and what he is trying to get them to do.  If we pour our energy into the positive, we cultivate the positive, and the negative has nothing to feed on.  (Why the “devil”-obsessed folks don’t just turn their attention to their faith in Jesus I cannot understand.)

So the negative withers and dies.  Compost!  It is still usable.  The idea of turning to the positive is a helpful reminder, but to turn our backs on the negative permanently encourages a dangerous denial; we don’t have to be afraid to look the dark side in the face and use it for good.

I think I have resisted optimism for so long because it seemed pathetically passive, to be a weak pawn clinging desperately to happy thoughts against the raging storms of chaos that toss us all around.  I could never understand how it could be better to be clueless about how bad things really are and to pretend that everything is okay.

But to be optimistic in the face of the suffering, the horrors, the pain of life, what courage and strength!  True optimism does not deny the negative, it simply acknowledges it, refuses to feed it, and converts it to positive energy to move forward along the path.

Cynicism and pessimism, which I used to think demonstrated a brave, bold acceptance of reality, I now believe are signs of defeat, of allowing the negative to swamp you and take over your life.  It is a cowardly surrender to despair.

There is suffering.  The negative does exist, and you will meet it on the path with alarming regularity.  But it is not the Way.  If we keep to the Wise Way, we will find love even in the midst of pain and sorrow, and our hearts, minds and wills can follow that light through any darkness.

A Big Resolution

On this New Year’s Eve, I have lots of small resolutions I could list: projects I mean to finish, people I mean to keep in better touch with, ways I mean to take better care of my family.

But if I could just make one resolution come true it would be this: to develop a core of wise calmness with which to respond to people and situations instead of my current strategy, which is to give into the temptation to lose my cool and stomp around hollering like a crazy person.

I fully sympathize with the pressure I’m under on a daily basis.  I frequently have many people clamoring, often not so quietly or politely, for my attention and my assistance.  I can (after the fact) look back at myself in a certain situation, say, with two pots working on the stove, my husband calling to have me edit a story, my three year old refusing to listen to his 8 year old sister’s demand that he stop whacking her with a dinosaur, all the while having a screaming baby beside me, and I can say, wow, no wonder you started hollering when one of the kids wrinkled their nose and said, “Ew! I don’t WANT that for dinner!”

But the reality is, I don’t want to excuse myself, however much I may understand that my angry response is natural.  Stressful situations are a part of everyone’s life.  When my kids are grown there will still be something that tries to push me over the edge.  I want a new response.  One that might not fix everything, but which will truly be the best response possible, and one that I won’t have to feel like crap about afterwards.

A few years ago, I went through a dark emotional time where I was intensely jealous of my husband.  I used to have to get out of bed and take my stewing to the living room, because I was absolutely consumed with pain throughout my heart and my body.  I sat with the horrible feelings, I wrote about it, I talked to people, I prayed, I desperately tried everything.  I have no idea what did the trick, but that nasty agonizing jealousy went away.

I believe the same thing can happen with my anger.  If I can only have one big change this year, I want it to be a connection to Oneness so deep that love and joy cannot help but infuse themselves into the world through my heart.

From Essential Sufism edited by James Fadiman & Robert Frager

“Some Israelites insulted Jesus one day as he walked through the marketplace.

He answered them only by repeating prayers in their name.

Someone said to him, “You prayed for these men.  Do you not feel anger at their treatment of you?”

He answered, “I could spend only what I carry in my purse.” — Attar