In Love With The World
Furthering the gift
In Love With the World, by Mark Nepo There is no end to love. We may tear ourselves away, or fall off the cliff we thought sacred, or return one day to find the home we dreamt of burning. But when the rain slows to a slant and the pavement turns cold, that place where I keep you and you and all of you--that place opens, like a fist no longer strong enough to stay closed. And the ache returns. Thank God. The sweet and sudden ache that lets me know I am alive. The rain keeps misting my face. What majesty of cells assembles around this luminous presence that moves around as me? How is it I'm still here? Each thing touched, each breath, each glint of light, each pain in my gut is cause for praise. I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet, with every child's eye, with every fallen being getting up. Like a worm cut in two, the heart only grows another heart. When the cut in my mind heals, I grow another mind. Birds migrate and caribou circle the cold top of the world. Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering, making our wounded- joyous cries: alone, then together, alone, then together. Oh praise the soul's migration. I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you. I am again in love with the world.
Through the windows of the glassed-in beach house porch, I could see the marsh in one direction—sunlight creating a golden shimmer over the feathery tops of the reeds near an osprey nest and the slim silhouette of a blue heron. In the opposite direction, a path leading out to the ocean, the dunes high enough to block any vision of the waves I could hear rolling in. Across from me in the room, my friend sat, sick with cancer that is taking her body in ever faster increments, but who also shimmers with a radiance of honesty about her journey ahead. Her own slim frame a silhouette of profound steadiness. She is more beautiful than ever. Remember this, I told myself. Remember all of this.
Jesuit priest and psychotherapist Anthony de Mello taught that the finest act of love you can offer is an act of seeing: “When you serve people, you help, support, comfort, alleviate pain. When you see people in their inner beauty and goodness, you transform and create.”
The gift of seeing someone, of seeing the inner beauty and goodness of another person and our surroundings, and the ability to mirror that goodness is the way community becomes a pathway toward refuge in our most loving self. Community with deep presence heals, transforms, resurrects, and creates a space of loving presence within that can be mirrored without. This past week I asked myself, can I mirror the beautiful goodness of this woman, this friend, with whom I’ve come alongside, and in doing so, allow my soul to migrate closer toward an enlarged awareness?
So, community. I’m hanging out with this idea a little longer because it’s so essential for us to experience the ways that connecting to and mirroring innate goodness gives us a sanctuary from chaos and brings us home to our own innate goodness. Home to the heart of refuge, which perhaps is itself the heart.
How can we begin? Start with this practice:
Find a quiet spot for your own contemplative meditation and set a timer for 8-10 minutes (5 if this is new to you). Settle into your body, into the space. Begin by moving into a comfortable seated position. Close your eyes if you’re at home doing so. Begin to notice that you are breathing. Notice the way your breath touches and moves the space around your heart.
Call to mind someone for whom it’s relatively easy and uncomplicated to feel loving toward. This could be a child, a partner, a friend, a diety, or even a pet. Visualize sitting across from this being and gazing into their eyes.
As you visualize sitting with this person, recall what you appreciate about them. Perhaps it’s their smile, their warmth, their generosity, their humor. Feel the sensation of appreciation in your body.
Now imagine being with them and telling them some of the things you appreciate about them. Perhaps even imagine leaning in to give them a gentle kiss on their forehead.
Again, notice how you feel physically—the physical sensations of mirroring their goodness. You could do the practice again with another person perhaps.
End by noticing and sitting with the sensations of this practice and with an awareness of your breath.
It’s essential to create the physical awareness of the experience. This practice can produce a cellular shift so that the work becomes part of you, and can help you to bring this kind of presence to your community, starting with the people closest to you, when you’re live and in person. It creates the ability to be deeply present with people and places. Being with community, then, becomes a heart expanding opportunity.
This was easy to do in a retreat setting. Less so in the day to day. And certainly easy to forget when sitting with a friend who is dying. Building the muscles of presence have helped me to exercise those muscles more regularly, and when I do, I do indeed find refuge in my heart space, in the space of love.
It’s an interesting space to reside in. In my heart space, time slows and the details of a moment become more vivid. I forget to be there often, but when I remember, I am rewarded with an expansiveness that feels for a time like I’m residing in the eternal. In that timeless place, my tired fist opens. I am indeed in love with it all.
Friends with paid subscriptions, I’ll return soon with additional video practices for you. Coming home from Greece with Covid and some big events in our personal life has slowed me down a bit. I’m still here though, doing what I can and what I love during this time. Stay with me. More is on the horizon soon.
