Tag: love

Happy Now

Life is a mystery, a composite, a kaleidoscope. You win, you lose; you cry, you laugh; you grieve, you celebrate. The door is closed; the window is open. You can go through life experiencing only one of these possibilities, or you can experience them all. Most of us are in the latter group, but sometimes we get stuck on one side or another of a polarity. We need to be reminded that life on Earth has many sides. That’s what our loved ones do for us.

A month or so ago, a longtime friend of Anne’s and mine died suddenly of a heart attack. He and his husband had been together more than 40 years, just as Anne and I have. It was shattering to hear the news, especially since we recently lost another friend who had been with her wife almost 50 years. I found myself worrying about Anne and me, as well as about everyone we know—future illnesses and deaths, impending grief and sadness. I was stuck on the side of fear and depression, which can happen, especially at night (“night mind” we call it in our house). This was when Anne stepped in with the perfect comment: “We have plenty of time to be depressed in the future. Let’s be happy now.” I laughed. Thank you, dear Anne.

Such a wise truth, that. One I sometimes forget when my emotions sweep through me. I inherited both sides of optimist/worrier outlooks from my parents. For example, I can recall my father staring out the window one morning and saying, “I hope that’s not poison ivy on that tree.” My mother, on the other hand, pointed out a nearby trumpet vine with bright-orange flowers. They both had worries, but my mother’s inclination was always to put a positive spin on things. My dad used humor for that spin. He was a very funny man. When I was tearfully suffering through an existential dilemma of not wanting to die or live forever, he paused thoughtfully and finally said (with a twinkle in his eye), “Well, you just can’t please some people.” We both laughed. My parents looked to each other for the gifts of humor and positivity. Anne and I do too. Together we give one another balance at key moments.

I can’t control life’s vacillations, but I am learning to accept them. When upsetting events occur, I rely on loving friends and family for a shoulder to cry on or laughter to balance the tears. With time, a larger overview brings perspective. From my soul’s point of view, life and death are one, a guided journey through infinity. The course of our lives takes us to that vantage point. Every life event opens the door wider to the cosmos and our place in it. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s excruciatingly painful at times if a parent, friend, or life partner dies. Yet, in the midst of our grief, there are often one or two human angels who appear, to provide solace and peace of mind.

I have encountered such angels—sometimes strangers, sometimes friends—at times of loss in my life. Even now, as I feel apprehension for the future aging and passing of those I love (and myself), there is a part of me that trusts in something greater than I can even imagine with my human mind. It is my soul that trusts, beyond all lifetimes, in the presence of Spirit (or God) in all things. Love as well as sorrow can open our hearts to the soul’s wisdom, the soul’s light. In loving one another, we experience all of life, and it passes through us with such divine beauty that how can we be anything but grateful? And “happy now.”

Life Partners, Life Friendships

My friends Savanna and Katie were together nearly 50 years, until Savanna’s recent passing this summer. One of their daughters created a touching video photo montage of their life together, complete with perfectly chosen music. As I watched it, with alternating tears and smiles, I could feel the depth of their love and the ongoing joy of the life they shared. Such a sweet blessing—for them and for all who knew them. It made me think of so many other friends with decades-long marriages or partnerships. Gay, straight, bi, trans—all relationships based in caring, devotion, laughter, joy, tears, and a mutual appreciation for one another. Anne and I have been together 41 years ourselves. The longer I live, the more I feel the preciousness of these lifelong connections, interlaced with shared memories and experiences.

And this applies to friendships as well. I have friends I’ve known since grade school, high school, college, and work, each of them unique and irreplaceable. In the 1970s, I lived in a household with four other women that holds a special place in my heart. We were feminists active in the Boston women’s movement, several of us in a women’s literature graduate program at Goddard-Cambridge. Out of that came the humorous name we called ourselves: Cranford, based on a 19th century novel by Elizabeth Gaskell about a community of women who lived together without husbands. We shared our lives and all the exciting changes at that time: women’s music, presses, magazines, sports teams, activist groups. We latter-day Cranford sisters have remained friends ever since, the five of us (with our partners) meeting via Zoom recently, in San Francisco, Boston, and Western Massachusetts, coming together across time and space to reconnect with love.

Whether partner or friend, those in our lives mean everything to us. These are the souls we’ve chosen, prebirth, to travel through this life with. There are no coincidences in these arrangements. We came here to be together for however long we’re meant to be, sharing exactly what we’re meant to share. Learning and growing together and separately. That’s why we often feel like we’ve known someone before when we first meet them. Souls can travel together through lifetimes, playing different roles, experiencing different life lessons. Perhaps all of life is one reunion after another within a giant tapestry of being and soul expansion.

Every Christmas Eve, I talk on the phone long-distance with my friend Barb, whom I’ve known since we were 11. Our families spent Christmas Eve together throughout our childhood and adolescent years in Illinois. The golden nugget of those memories has stayed with us all our lives, through moving to different coasts, after the deaths of each of our parents, throughout changes, differences, and similarities. Each December 24, all of it comes together in one phone call in which we remember all the years of knowing and loving each other. We laugh and shed tears, and we renew our connection.

I treasure that phone call and our friendship, just as I treasure each one of my friends and especially dear Anne who has been by my side more than half my life. There is nothing like a life partner or a life friendship. It is one of the greatest gifts life on Earth brings us. May I always hold that deep appreciation and gratitude in my heart.

Love, Peace, and Flower Power?

My generation was born in the years after World War II and the Holocaust. The horrors and suffering of that time were still in our parents’ consciousness when we were conceived. If cellular memory can be transferred parent to child, then we emerged with our own unique consciousness that was a mixture of the pain of the past and hope for the future. We carried that through the years of our growing up and coming of age as we witnessed the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War on our TV screens. At a certain point, we ourselves birthed a new awakened awareness, informed by global events but also infused with a positive vision for humanity that we had come to Earth to express. We became the activists and flower children of the late 1960s and 1970s. In the midst of the world’s conflicts and hatred, we spoke our simple truth: Love, Peace, and Flower Power.

In 1969, “in the streets of San Francisco,” I wore flowers in my hair, moved by a belief in loving connections beyond my one individual lifetime. I, and so many others, held that belief in our hearts for decades, working individually and collectively for a more compassionate world based in loving-kindness and equality. We may not use those words now in the 21st century, but the sentiment still rings true for many of us. The question is: Is it still relevant?

What is the state of human consciousness and inter-relationships on this planet? Is love of others and peace on Earth really possible? Many would say No, humans hate and kill one another again and again. Yet, that’s not the whole story. In so many places, what continues to flower (!), in spite of all odds, is kindness and mutual support among people in diverse communities, as well as the courage and strength to persist and survive. Perhaps balance is slowly being restored.

In singing, in speaking, in sharing, we express our humanity, heart and soul fully engaged and interactive with others and with the positive energy of connection and love. We come together in unity for the common good. The deeper truth is that the future is being lived now. This moment is all we have, according to the wisdom of elders in so many cultures. What you sow, you shall reap, moment to moment. Live love, and love moves through you in circles of reciprocity and expansion within your lifetime and beyond. Together we are a living breathing mandala of possibility and wonder. We are colorful bits of light dancing within a cosmic kaleidoscope. We are Spirit in human form.

So perhaps “love, peace, and flower power” never becomes obsolete, outdated. The specific words may change, the clothing and hairstyles differ, but the living spirit of humanity always holds within it a seed of compassion and care for others. Love is timeless, peace is within us, and nature reflects back to us the beauty of our own beingness in every flower that blooms. This is the vision I have held all my life.

Things

 In the Western world, we become accustomed to accumulating things in our lives. Possessions, or “stuff,” as the comedian George Carlin called it. We fill our drawers and our living spaces with things: clothes, shoes, gadgets, memorabilia. And then we go to the store or online to buy more. Many people end up with so much stuff, they rent storage units for what won’t fit in their homes. We saw these storage companies all over Florida when we lived there. Accumulations of a lifetime, perhaps, that people couldn’t part with when they retired.

This is a privilege not available to so many people, who may not be able to afford a house, let alone all the things to put in it. Yet advertising everywhere pushes that mindset: aspiring to owning and accumulating. Those who can’t achieve it are left feeling at a loss: outsiders in a culture that rewards those who have money and possessions. All we need at the most basic level is food and shelter, and the homeless live with that challenge daily while those who have both pass them by in the street.

Still, beneath the fullness of owning things, there is an emptiness. When you come to the end of your life, and you only have physical objects and a bank account to look back on, something feels not quite right. What about human relationships? What about love and the kindness of sharing with others (like those who struggle to survive)?

As I get older, I am finding my interest in buying things, which was always relatively minimal, has faded even more. I have little desire to buy anything and often think of it as potential clutter that will just have to be dusted or cleaned! The clothes I have are fine. I don’t need to own the latest devices or tech innovations. I get books and films from the library. Spending time walking outdoors in Nature is more important to me than what’s in my apartment. My friends and family mean more to me than my Mac or cell phone.

Over a lifetime, many individuals come to see that things have little meaning without the people they are close to—and the feeling of connection and love that is part of that. Sharing what you have in your heart as well as what you have in your wallet is an open door to a deeper experience of life. We came here not for the “things” but for the people. We came here to love—and to let go of everything else.

What Is Destiny?

The idea of destiny scares many people. They fear losing individual control over their lives, the “free will” they’ve always been told they have (in the Western world anyway): “If I can’t change the course of my life, am I a victim of circumstance? Am I a prisoner of fate?” Thoughts such as these can trap us in polarity and a single-minded view of the world. Words are like frames really; if you change the frame, the meaning changes.

What if we called destiny something else? Use a verb frame instead of a noun. How about: Destiny is flowing with the river of the universe. It is dancing with the divine music of the spheres. Living from the soul in pure loving awareness. Or all of the above. Instead of a closed door, destiny could be an open field, the one your soul and God designed together for you to play in in this lifetime. Destiny could just be another name for you and God as One.

We humans want to believe we can single-handedly control our daily lives, avoiding pain and hanging onto happiness. We fear getting lost in suffering. Yet no one can live a human life without experiencing the full spectrum of emotions, from sadness to joy. The secret is that we don’t have to suffer as we feel these things. If we open our minds and our hearts to a fully expanded soul view of the universe, then perhaps we can better see that we are one small, but essential, part of an intricately interwoven tapestry of light, color, and sound, which was created long ago (in human terms) and is continuing to unfold.

What if destiny is actually the supernovas, galaxies, and stardust from which we were born exploding across the cosmos to manifest as Planet Earth and you in this moment of human time and space? What if destiny is the spark of life itself within you? It is born, expands into shining beingness, and then gradually fades back into the universal matter from which it arose. All of it extraordinarily beautiful and magical and over which we have no control. You can only observe the unfolding in awe and wonder. This is human destiny. Within that is celebration not grief if seen through the lens of divine Presence. You are a miracle within a miracle.

Peace of mind and inner calm arise when we allow acceptance of life the way it is to fill our conscious awareness. This is not really alien to our human selves because deep within us is the core of living spirit (soul) which is peace itself. It is this Spirit that flows through the galaxies and through us and connects everything in oneness. We and the stars are destined to shine together. Accept every moment of your life, and light will radiate from you, and the idea of control will dissolve completely. Then you will know destiny as the gift of love and grace that it is.