Love reflects Love

There are so many teachings of Jesus that have impacted me  - pointing to how we care for each other - ourselves, our friends, our neighbors, strangers, and our enemies. Jesus's words are like the air I breath.

A fundamental understanding of Buddhism is that change is inevitable. It's what we do with change that matters.

Care for each other. Change. 

A driving question in my life has been: Where are my people?

On this day, it is with souls in the warmth of a living room on a foggy, rainy day.

A small group of people met for worship in the home of one of us preparing to enter a hospice facility this week. Everyone in the circle has decades of shared joys and sorrows, celebrations and troubles, and the thick soup of life.

I am reflecting on the changes and the fundamental truths that got me to this point. While I moved my Quaker membership to another meeting 8 years ago, it is this group with whom I spent 20 years of my formative adult years and with whom were called to worship during this particular day. 

Some of us had shared in a Marriage Enrichment training and kept up with potlucks and practicing "the skills" for several years beyond the initial training as we coped with raising kids, working, and trying to get along with our partners. (Okay, sometimes we wanted to kill our beloved or leave them.) Others had not participated in that group, but had served on committees together, raised our kids together (and talked about how our relationships were driving us crazy), and worshipped together. 

The key word: worship. 

We worshipped together in a pretty vulnerable way over these many years.  In an unprogrammed Quaker meeting, this is, indeed, very intimate. There are no paid ministers. There is no one elevated to guide the "service." The service is sitting in silence, waiting for a sense that the Divine or Holy One or Guidance is working through the group and sometimes someone lifts up a message needing to be expressed. Worship is the root practice of opening our hearts to the Mystery of Love.

Infused with our daily lives, we came together with the understanding that the sacred is infused in everything we do, how we live, and most importantly, how we love. And, we often fell short. Often is big ways.  Somehow, the community is still chugging along. Isn't that what Church is all about? 

What eyes am I seeing through in the midst of fog? tears? change? tenderness? fierceness?

At worship with these familiar friends, one person said that "Love reflects Love." The words are intense enough, but he kept saying it like his hair was on fire. 

In the moment right now, I am looking at the autumn trees and see how this is true. Even the woods are aglow with Love reflects Love. In the winter, it will be with the cold crispness and the breathtaking ache of life. And in the spring, it will be with the bursting color of flowers. Maybe there will be another summer for some of us and the juiciness of "Love reflects Love." How beautiful each of these faces, these seasons, in the midst of the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows.

What seems true right now is that the immediacy of Love burned away any petty crap that I had been carrying around. Somehow, we all had survived our marriages. Except, now we had to face the loss of our lovers. Each other. What we have fought so hard to build and live within. One Marriage Enrichment couple already experienced a death as the other partner was in the tunnel of dementia. Obviously, they weren't with us in worship physically. Some of us have dealt with cancer, heart disease, and more. We are really getting down to the sick, aging and dying part now.

My hair is on fire with "Love reflects Love." It is a burning truth. Except for me, it is more like the Buddhist Tonglen practice - breathing in hot, difficult suffering and breathing out cool, soothing compassion with my hair on fire.

The roots of these relations are proving to be more important than the history I attach to them. Time and space are unimportant. Simply put, they are friends. They are my people. As we all return to God, I keep learning how we all belong to each other.

When is a heavy heart lightened?

Being one-half of a pair, I am sometimes surprised by our interconnectedness. The knot was tied over 36 years ago. And, we had a few years of fun friendship before that. In many ways, I felt like I got to watch my beloved partner mature into adulthood. Now it feels like we are moving into old age.

I love hair!

Looking back to the winter of 1980, there was a moment as "friends" where we went to leave a gathering and walked out to the parking lot together. We both will never forget the moment there was an absolutely electric/magnetic charge between us. I felt it everywhere. It was one of those moments where the impulse to reach out and kiss this young man was almost unstoppable. I wanted to dive into the unknown with him. I'm pretty sure both of us had the hairs on our body standing on end.

His memory of that moment was just as electric with an added thought: Really, God?! Her? She's the answer to my prayers for a partner?!

At the time, Partner had been running around with a few other women, but he was looking for something more. For those of you who know me, boy if he didn't get something more!

The next week, we made the dive. We went out almost every night until we got married 16 months later.

So much has happened between here and there. So many joys, sorrows, challenges, and juiciness.

One of our saving graces has been that we have a shared desire for God/the Divine/Love. It is not abstract. We see it in everything and through the eyes of each other. We just have to remember to lift our heads from the daily grind.

So when this year's challenges between the sad state of the world, big changes at Partner's work, and minor health things arose, well, it seemed right that his heart felt heavy. My heart felt heavy.

We both had minor skins removals, polyps removed in our insides, tests run. But there was a moment when someone caught his heart doing weird things. This lead to a cardiologist which led to more tests and finally a specialist within cardiology.

This past week he had an ablation procedure done. No big deal to those who do them. Not so minor to those having it done to them.

No need to go into the details. It was a long day for everyone. We left home at 8:15 a.m. and got back home at 11 p.m. (A special thanks to our daughter for covering dogcare, a cousin who lived near the hospital who offered hospitality, and a meditation friend and his wife who lent us their EZPass. Big thanks to those who reached out with cards and prayers.)

As Partner was coming out of the anesthesia, he told me that his heart felt lighter. A week later, it is still so. The added benefit is that he has much more energy. The kind of disease process at work was subtle. He was missing about 1:4 beats, which lead to him feeling his heart wobble in his chest, and extremities becoming more and more numb. The next thing would be to pass out. He drives heavy equipment. Not a good thing.

So, these procedures sometimes take, and sometimes, the heart goes back to its old ways. In which case, a pacemaker is in his future. This summer his cardiologist had pronounced his heart was about 15 years older than his chronological age. Maybe this resets the clock.

Recovery

It has taken me more time to feel "lighter." I was around to provide gentle, supportive care those first days. No deep bending, lifting or much of anything those first few days for him. I was glad to be around to help or just be present to what arose. I ran the risk of being a nag because he would forget and do something he wasn't supposed to do or vice versa.

It was a time of reflection, laughter, and tears - for both of us. What do we want to do now? How do we want to be in this next phase of life? Can we remember to connect more deeply? It is true that we do Marriage Enrichment skills weekly, which is a spiritual practice for us. But how to freshen up our relationship? We have been holding a Quaker-style meeting for worship most Sunday mornings at our home. We pray at mealtimes.

It got me to thinking how the happiest couple I knew was my mother's parents. They did not argue. Their childhoods had been so difficult that they seemed to have made a pact about how they wanted to be. They had a family business together. And, they were very physical with each other.

They were sexy, really. Even after they aged and had their own health challenges, their touch was physical, even if it was a smile across the room.

I'm not saying sex fixes everything. But for me, it helps me stay connected to myself and not disassociate or go into my thinking mind. And it reminds me how wonderful touch can be when it is hooked with a loving heart.

Can I remember that there is this powerful thing called Love operating in the heart of our relationship? How much have I missed of the Divine by not seeing the gift of Partner as an invitation to more? Can I stand the risk of experiencing such goodness, knowing that this,
too, will end?

May we have more of this

On his first day back to work this week, he became overwhelmed with emotion at an event we shared in the evening. He felt so much better! He had a new lease on life.

I relaxed. Yes. My heart is lighter.

Such gifts

This morning's gift was... muscle spasms in my back. Monday morning getting out of bed. What felt like a "cold" in my back, soon because spasms that depending on my move, would gently clamp to wringing the breath from me.

Today was a retry at a vacation that was supposed to start this past Friday. Friday was basically a work day, but mostly at home.

So Saturday was better. Naps after lunch.

The news of the Charlottesville, VA protests was personal. Friends live there and clergy I know responded to the National Council of Churches request for religious leaders to protest hate and assist those in need. Was is true that Japan launched a missile over North Korea?

Sunday, we held worship together at home. I made a pound cake, my newest comfort food to make. Later in the day, a vigil was held in my hometown in response to the Charlottesville violence, which I attended and saw several familiar brothers and sisters in peace.

Our a/c died last night. So the repairman is here today. First-world problems. More time for art, music, and domestic life while waiting... for things outside my control.

There is an added poignancy in the ordinary during these extraordinary times.

Partner offered to pick the spicy mustard greens I had planted earlier this summer. I am not sure he will eat them. Earlier in the week, he picked the beginning of a concord grape harvest. He doesn't really like them, either.

Such love.

Emerging from the Dark on the Shortest Day

Being an emerging old woman, sleep is something that happens on its own terms. Last night was one of those times when sleep was short. You'd think on the eve of the shortest day that sleep would want to cozy up in bed.

I got up at midnight and moved to the the recliner in the living room for a half-hour or so. (Samson, the collie, followed me.) But my mind kept returning to the state of the world. Oh, Lordy Lord. What a mess.

At 12:30 a.m., I got up in earnest - time to work. I wrote my work notes, filed them, and did other office-related work. That got me to 1:30 a.m. Good ole Samson nearby.

In the dark of the night with my quiet work done, I lit Our Lady of Guadalupe candles on the kitchen table window sill with Samson at my feet. Our Lady who visited the peasant Juan Diego in the mountains, not the church leadership. Our Lady who sees the Suffering in the world and in some way aids them. Our Lady who visits the least of us. Our Lady who hears the cries of the world.

It struck me that this was the perfect time to make a "healing hat."

I have several friends dealing with cancer. I made my second hat and gave it to an artist friend who said her treatment center was the most colorless place she'd ever been to. How are you supposed to heal in a place so grey.

My first hat was actually started in response to a Christmas without my grandson here. I was sad and needing cheering up. I took the mesh from the spiral ham and started tying colorful curling ribbon to sections. I wore it that Christmas Eve evening when the rest of our family showed up. Ironically, my very particularly aware artistic niece at age 5 was not impressed and thought I showed bad taste. But that did not deter me since I had raised teenagers.

I used that hat for a workshop on healing and music this past summer after making my friend her own hat for chemo baldness. Actually, the hat sits over a lamp in her living room and is a conversation piece. She now sends me red mesh from citrus to make other hats.

When I make a hat, there is a process evolving. Last night, I light a candle, play Healing Harp music from Sarajane Williams, and pick the colors for the particular person for which the hat is intended. Measure and cut each strand. Thinking of the Three Norns or Goddesses of Fate in Viking culture, as I write this: one to weave the thread, one to measure the length, one to cut the ribbon's length. One ribbon at a time. Knot by knot. It is an act of prayer.

So in the belly of darkness, I felt drawn to make another hat for another friend undergoing chemo. Instead of the intense brights of summer, these colors were frostier. White, lavendar, mint green, blue-green and purple. Winter in the midst of the fire of disease and treatment and loss.

Praying about the state of the world, my friends and family, my friend with cancer, and my desire, as I listened to Sarajane, to continue to play the harp for sacred events, healing circles, reflection, and celebrations.

I was also thinking about how I and other women have been sharing their stories as grandmothers and their roles in supporting their daughters in birth in some way. Holding the door on unnecessary interventions and c-section advocating for what is called for in the best sense of the family. The memories of my own labors in the middle of the dark and quiet night with birth before or at dawn. Such a thin veil.

The hat was done before sunrise. Partner up and ready to leave at 5:30 a.m. The braiding of his hair, the warm kisses in predawn before heading out to the frigid winter air. Waiting for the rosey dawn sky to emerge in another hour or two. The tending to the household, the meditation group, an elderly friend, a local business fundraising for mental health support in the community, and then later in the day, a nap.

Oh, Blessed Mary that never has it been known that anyone who sought your help was left unaided, with confidence, humble and repentant, full of Love and Hope, this favor I implore. Amen.

May I be an instrument of Your peace.

Healing Hats on Gloria, Samson in foreground.