Every year I’m surprised by how much spring looks like autumn. I’ll walk to work, delighting in the crab apples blooming pink or the fruit trees snowing petals, then do a double-take: The elm shakes with brown seeds; the maple’s winged clusters are bright red.
We are each a jewel in a mighty net. When we are unaware of this, disasters like the pandemic happen. When we are aware and bring whole, open hearts to our common plight, the net sparkles.
The question that presses at me daily now is this: Will I allow myself to be changed for the better by this pandemic? Today? Even
Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other. It is not about the presence of other people—it is about being fully open to the reality of relationship, whether or not we are alone.” –Parker Palmer
So what can we do? We can accept these limits. We can release, again and again, our needs for security, affection, and control. We can embrace this moment as it is, fully welcoming the wisdom of the body, because in our fear and sadness and anger hides our immense love for this world, and that’s where divinity enters.
Delio dismissed the concept of institutionalized religion with a wave of her hand—it’s too small, inaccurate, misleading. Religion is a dynamic in evolution moving creation to ever greater diversity and unity.
In meditation, I practice releasing my grip on something I love for the sake of something I don’t yet know or trust—silence, rest, peace. I pray this exercises my capacity to welcome new loves, because I really need this ability in the real world where my attachments are so hard to relinquish. Especially when I don’t even know I’m attached.
Just when I think I’m aware and making conscious choices, something—Richard Rohr would say either great love or great suffering—spurs me to open my eyes even further and another layer of illusion falls away.
My dreams are scriptural because they are oddly wiser than me. They know me and change me into a truer me, even when I don’t remember them.
What do I see that no one else sees? Why do I see this? What is born of my personality and circumstances and gifts and shortcomings—what rises up from my unique self so strongly that all self-doubt falls aside and I can’t help but act? That’s what is mine to do.