Tag: open heart

Saving Grace—Elephants, Dolphins, and Whales

Elephants, dolphins, and whales are three of the most intelligent, grace-filled beings on Earth. In this week’s video blog, I talk about my own experiences with them and offer a prayer/plea for their survival. May we humans open our awareness and step away from cruel and heartless behaviors that endanger the lives and well-being of these magnificent creatures we share the planet with. Save the elephants. Save the dolphins. Save the whales. Save all animals. And in doing so, save the sweet grace they embody in their lives.

A Perfect Pairing: Patience and Trust

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
In the past, patience has been sort of a situational attribute of mine. Sometimes I’m completely allowing of the gradual unfolding of events, and at other times, I find myself leaning forward, impatient for the next plot twist in my life story—or the planet’s. On a spiritual journey, however, there is no place for impatience or grabbing for the gold at the end of the rainbow. The highest wisdom is that you are holding the gold in your hands right now, and the rainbow is directly in front of your eyes. I re-learn this with regularity the deeper I dive into life’s mysteries. In truth, the story has already been written, and only my soul and God have access to the entire script. So the illusion of control falls away, and I am left to completely surrender to the trajectory of my own life.

That is where trust comes in to bolster patience. If I remember that there is a divine orchestration much greater than my mind’s perceptions, then I can relax into trusting that everything will come to pass exactly when it’s meant to. There is no hurrying the course of life’s events. In fact, the tension caused by grasping and clutching at the future only puts a chokehold on the flow. The energy of trying and wanting keeps you caught in a tailspin that leads nowhere. As soon as you let go, everything opens up, and the river’s current streams naturally forward. What divine intelligence has in mind for my life is infinitely more expansive and imaginative than even my most creative multidimensional visions. When I trust in that completely, both the gold and the rainbow become clearly visible right before me.

We often hear that patience is a virtue, but the deeper meaning of that is lost in our frenetic push-for-the-outcome world. Impatiently pushing only creates the energy of struggle and keeps us frantically racing on a treadmill of trying. Even success brings the worry of maintaining what we have achieved through striving. We believe only our own hard work can achieve anything in life. At the level of the personality self, or ego, control is the only truth. The soul, however, knows that control is an illusion, and we are part of a dynamic universal dance that we as humans can participate in but can’t control.

There is a beauty and freedom in realizing that. Through letting go at the deepest level, we find freedom from the gridlock of grasping at the material world in order to satisfy what is actually a soul yearning. What we long for, really, is to be one with something greater than our individual solitary selves. When I restlessly reach for the future, I only emphasize my aloneness. When I recognize and accept my life’s path as a beautiful mystery to which only God holds the key, I learn patience and trust and become one with everything around me. Loving my life right now, as is, draws more love to me. The blessing that is human-divine connection is then revealed within my own heart and within the hearts of everyone I meet.

A Love Story

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
Mt. Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been my spiritual and nature sanctuary for more than twenty years. Filled with towering trees, flowering bushes, and wildflowers, as well as ponds, hills, and dells, it is the closest I come to being in the country while living not far from Boston’s urban landscape. I walk there in silent meditation at all times of the year, and every spring I spend countless hours observing the annual migration of songbirds from Central and South America. Hundreds of birds come through Mt. Auburn, and some nest there, because of its abundance of trees and other natural features.

The history of the cemetery itself as well as those buried there, known and unknown, is quite interesting too, but I usually pay only fleeting attention to the angel sculptures and carved gravestones, as my eyes are focused upward, looking through my binoculars at orioles, tanagers, and warblers. I always take note of Longfellow’s and Margaret Fuller’s graves as I pass, but other than that, the birds and nature are my primary reasons for being there. All that changed one Saturday last month, however, when, as I rounded a turn on a familiar hillside path, I suddenly noticed a gravestone I had not noticed previously.

My eyes were first drawn to a quote by the Dalai Lama etched in the stone: “Be kind whenever possible. (It is always possible.).” Wondering who had chosen it (one of my own favorites), I glanced at the names above it. Immediately, I saw that they were both women and were both born in 1949. One was still alive, and the other had died in 2013. Just below these dates was the single line: “Married on June 15, 2004.” The story this simple gravestone told may have been invisible to some, but to me, another lesbian, it was crystal clear. These two women had married immediately after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts in May of 2004, and one had died nine years later. As the emotional impact of that hit me, I glanced down further at the bottom of the stone, where I read the following sentence: “Together we could do anything.”

This completely undid me, and I began to sob openly. Fortunately, no one was nearby. I just stood there and let my heart completely break open with love and sorrow for these women who had shared their lives, at long-last legally recognized, and then been separated by death. I could not help but feel close to them because my partner Anne and I had also married when same-sex marriage became legal (after 31 years together). Our ceremony was held on June 22, 2014 (three years ago today) at Mt. Auburn Cemetery’s Auburn Lake, not far from where I was standing at that moment. The parallels sent chills up and down my spine.

Part of Anne’s and my decision to marry was that we didn’t want to regret not having had a special ceremony to share our love with friends and family, even though our relationship was not a new one. I could only imagine how these two women felt—about how important their marriage and those nine years were to them. A delicate etching at the top of the stone shows a path leading to distant mountains and a table in the foreground with an open book on it, cat below. I imagined them hiking, reading, and loving their cat together, just as Anne and I have done. I also pictured the surviving partner choosing the images as a way of cherishing those memories.

Our lives are so intertwined, we human souls. We think we are living distinctly individual destinies, but at moments like this, we see the larger picture, filled with synchronistic commonality. Really, there is only one destiny, and that is love. When we meet—beautiful gender-free spirits in human form—and allow love to fill us, yes, we can do anything, together. We can touch hearts beyond our own lifetimes with the sheer power of the love we embody and share.

• Dedicated to Julie Felty and Susan Donaldson

Gifts from God

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
The people in our lives are gifts from God, not there by happenstance but by design. And not to be taken for granted or overlooked but instead continuously recognized and treasured. In my day-to-day life, my spiritual path repeatedly draws me inward to a profound divine connection. Within that experience, I feel as one with everything in the cosmos. I love those experiences. They teach me again and again why I am here on this planet. Yet, what I forget sometimes is that I am also here to connect with my fellow human beings, to be a part of their lives and have them be a part of mine. Meditation and inner journeys are extraordinary, but this Earth experience when shared at the deepest level with others is equally extraordinary. Without it, your heart can never crack open wide enough to let the divine in—or out.

A few Saturdays ago, I spent the day with two friends, a married couple whom I’ve known for over thirty years. In the morning, my partner Anne and I helped her mulch their garden with several other neighbors and friends, and in the afternoon we visited her husband at a rehab center in Boston, where he was recovering from chemo treatments for cancer. We hadn’t seen him for several months, and our visit was a surprise. The expression of welcoming joy on his face when we walked in was enough to bring tears to all of our eyes. After we hugged and then chatted a bit, we went to nearby Waterfront Park for an impromptu picnic. As we watched the boats and people come and go and basked in the spring sunshine, we told stories and shared experiences, past and present, that brought us all even closer together. Moments of laughter and tears that mean so much when old friends reunite, especially in the midst of life challenges like they have been facing.

And it was precisely that old friendship and those challenges that allowed us to drop everything nonessential from our conversations (and for them, from their lives). At times like these, we remember what is really important: to look in another human being’s eyes and say “I love you.” And we did. Nothing else matters. Nothing. So many times, we get caught up in our own lives and forget that essential truth, that key to all human relationships and to all of life: Love. Openly expressed and shared. We are here for such a relatively short time on this planet. Why waste a single moment in distraction or separation of any kind? We all feel joy, we all feel pain, our hearts encompass every possible human emotion. We are alike, we human souls in physical form—let’s not lose sight of our essential oneness.

When Anne and I came home, we felt we had been blessed with such a sacred experience in that unplanned day with our friends. The laundry undone, the emails unanswered—what did it matter? To-do lists are meant to be tossed aside in favor of spontaneous life moments that God presents us with every day. The people in your life are gifts from God. Their lives are precious, as is yours—don’t chose routine, or even meditation, when a human/divine soul stands before you ready to share their heart with you. That is why you were born, why I was born. Let us remember together the love that links our lives.

Where Exactly Is God?

This is a question that many of us may have asked at different times in our lives, either from curiosity or in frustration. In this week’s video blog, I talk about both of these ways of wondering about God’s existence—whatever word you wish to use for Source energy or universal consciousness—and my own thoughts on where it can be found.