pencils up
What prompts someone, after a year, to wake up and say "time to write here again?"
It's a confluence of things. A recent hospital visit where some illnesses (shingles among them) were discovered, and some serious, lay you on the ground, symptoms before the visit. Reconnection with old friends, making some new, and those conversations. Newly (finally) becoming vegan. Major life shifts (career, move, love). Having a best friend get diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Tentative forays back to church.
Missing my mom.
Cliches exist for a reason, and to say that my mother's death has been my most life-altering experience would not be inaccurate. My life looks completely different than it did a year ago, and that is in no small part to her passing and my reactions and choices in relation to that. Our relationship continues, which is sometimes hard for people to understand unless they've lived something similar, I think. On any given day I feel a mixture of grief, deep connection, joy and hope. And I remember. The person she was, the way she loved, who were were together. The idea of "carrying [her] heart in my heart" (e.e. cummings) resonates.
So today I wanted to write about love.
With all the violence and rupture happening in the world, it feels like a beyond-timely subject. Of course, there are many different kinds of love (more on that in a minute), but mostly I'm clear that the world desperately needs more of it in all its forms.
This article, shared by a dear friend, prompted some of my most recent thoughts, and then taking the "5 Love Languages" quiz from Gary Chapman added to that contemplation. (As did a conversation with the aforementioned friend about the different Greek words for love. I had thought our one English word is way too limiting. But I'm starting to think maybe the common threads are what's important. Maybe simple is best.)
I have been blessed to have had some great loves (and not just romantic, partnered ones). My relationship with my last partner was the one I thought I might last in conventional form. But having the realization that while we hold some values deeply in common, there are other essential (for me) ones we don't share, and me making the decision to love in a different, non-partnered way, was sad and yet affirming at the same time. That that decision could be made without animosity feels important. There are seeds there, as there are in the relationship with my mother. Respect. Kindness. Acknowledging those differences, honoring our connection and humanity. Listening. Deeply seeing. Things that are absent when violence tears the world.
It is a challenge sometimes to live and love in a universe where the urgent messages of how to be are so counter to how I want to live, but yet being called to love and serve those same people who live by those values. Valuing my own heart and beliefs, holding true to them and yet making love more than a warm feeling, living in a way that respects other people, regardless of the reciprocity or the outcomes.
And yet. I am capable of the most casual cruelties, the moments where I will wound, or misunderstand, or not show up the way those I love most need me to. On one level, I judge myself for what I perceive as imperfections. On the other hand, my humanity rests there, and the chance to learn, grow with others, see them and myself, and forgive. I'll return to this again and again, and hopefully keep learning these lessons in a deeper way. May I try to give that compassion and love to others, and to myself, so imperfectly, daily.
(I realized, after writing this, I didn't talk about how my faith informs these views. Or desire and intimacy. But maybe those are different entries...)
[This blog was fueled by: this, and this, and this]
It's a confluence of things. A recent hospital visit where some illnesses (shingles among them) were discovered, and some serious, lay you on the ground, symptoms before the visit. Reconnection with old friends, making some new, and those conversations. Newly (finally) becoming vegan. Major life shifts (career, move, love). Having a best friend get diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Tentative forays back to church.
Missing my mom.
Cliches exist for a reason, and to say that my mother's death has been my most life-altering experience would not be inaccurate. My life looks completely different than it did a year ago, and that is in no small part to her passing and my reactions and choices in relation to that. Our relationship continues, which is sometimes hard for people to understand unless they've lived something similar, I think. On any given day I feel a mixture of grief, deep connection, joy and hope. And I remember. The person she was, the way she loved, who were were together. The idea of "carrying [her] heart in my heart" (e.e. cummings) resonates.
So today I wanted to write about love.
With all the violence and rupture happening in the world, it feels like a beyond-timely subject. Of course, there are many different kinds of love (more on that in a minute), but mostly I'm clear that the world desperately needs more of it in all its forms.
This article, shared by a dear friend, prompted some of my most recent thoughts, and then taking the "5 Love Languages" quiz from Gary Chapman added to that contemplation. (As did a conversation with the aforementioned friend about the different Greek words for love. I had thought our one English word is way too limiting. But I'm starting to think maybe the common threads are what's important. Maybe simple is best.)
I have been blessed to have had some great loves (and not just romantic, partnered ones). My relationship with my last partner was the one I thought I might last in conventional form. But having the realization that while we hold some values deeply in common, there are other essential (for me) ones we don't share, and me making the decision to love in a different, non-partnered way, was sad and yet affirming at the same time. That that decision could be made without animosity feels important. There are seeds there, as there are in the relationship with my mother. Respect. Kindness. Acknowledging those differences, honoring our connection and humanity. Listening. Deeply seeing. Things that are absent when violence tears the world.
It is a challenge sometimes to live and love in a universe where the urgent messages of how to be are so counter to how I want to live, but yet being called to love and serve those same people who live by those values. Valuing my own heart and beliefs, holding true to them and yet making love more than a warm feeling, living in a way that respects other people, regardless of the reciprocity or the outcomes.
And yet. I am capable of the most casual cruelties, the moments where I will wound, or misunderstand, or not show up the way those I love most need me to. On one level, I judge myself for what I perceive as imperfections. On the other hand, my humanity rests there, and the chance to learn, grow with others, see them and myself, and forgive. I'll return to this again and again, and hopefully keep learning these lessons in a deeper way. May I try to give that compassion and love to others, and to myself, so imperfectly, daily.
(I realized, after writing this, I didn't talk about how my faith informs these views. Or desire and intimacy. But maybe those are different entries...)
[This blog was fueled by: this, and this, and this]