Reflection For December

This is intended as a reflective space to which you can return. Each month you’ll find a new reflection which I invite you to read slowly and to linger with.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATH

To love everything is like a fire.
When love is done, all that’s left
is God and the path.
— George quoting Angie quoting Rumi

Once broken open, there is no turning back. Once the heart unlocks, it gasps and cries like a newborn at this thing called air. It is miraculous and painful to be so sensitive, to feel everything, to register everything, to have everything leave its mark. So, once alive, inside and out, how do we do this?

It is a great source of humility that the wonder and the breaking happen all at once. The flutist weeps after finally playing Debussy while the lost boy from the Sudan dreams of his village burning over and over. That I can stare with you into the breach between the endless love and the endless suffering, take your hand, and listen to your damaged heart is a privileged ride. Just wha
t has life done to us?

The mountains endure another day of pilgrims dancing and mourners pulling at their faces and another night of animals chewing grasses from the cracks in their ancient stone. And legend has it that, after the ash had cooled and they came back into what had been Pompeii, they found what must have been a person. He or she was a hardened column in the middle of the path. Their mouth was permanently open. Their eyes all done with their seeing. Their arms and legs a go. It was impossible to tell if, in their searing moment, they were running or dancing.

Either way, we have only this chance to love—now, today, to love whoever or whatever is before us. For the mountains will outlast us. The love will outlast us. But who we are will be used up to keep the blessing going. So put down whatever you have carved that is sharp—your mind, your edge, all your prepared responses. This is something that beggars all preparation. In the loving, nothing is ever saved and nothing is ever lost.