October 20, 2024
The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. Not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future, just love.
- Glennon Doyle
It’s finally starting to feel like fall in Texas and we’re already crafting the Thanksgiving menu. Before we get to the holidays, however, we have an election approaching with an urgency that feels more like an emergency. Our democracy is teetering on the brink, as it has been for the past decade. This election could be the final straw. Everything feels shaky and surreal. Disinformation and outright lies have cluttered the airwaves and internet, and facts are openly disregarded. As a country, we are weary and frustrated. Many people have lost interest, curiosity, and hope. However, there is a rising tide of energy and enthusiasm that I haven’t seen in years.
In the midst of all this, I’m reminded of the power we carry in our minds and hearts. Here we do have control as we choose our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. What are we imagining as we look to the future? What are our hopes and dreams? What are our fears? Fear seems to have the upper hand and the loudest voice right now. How do we ignore things that are loud and disturbing? We can turn off the noise and go within. In the stillness, we find the Voice of Love, Wisdom, and Peace. This is where truth resides.
In moments of quiet, we can also gather our thoughts and ask ourselves some things. Most importantly, we can begin to notice. What do you imagine for your life, your family, your country, your world? Notice if fear comes up, or beauty and joy. There is a choice to be made here, and it is one that will reverberate. If we deliberately choose to hold only thoughts of love, peace, and healing over the next month (for starters), we will notice a shift within and around us.
We have to choose this again and again, because it is a hard position to hold, like tree pose in yoga. I wobble and concentrate and sometimes lose my balance. It’s like that when we work on love. It takes so much practice, intention, and focus. But, like yoga, regular practice builds balance and strength. It gets easier.
I just got Anne Lamott’s latest book – Somehow: Thoughts on Love. She acknowledges how scary and messy life can be, and how love scoops us up in the middle of it all. She tells the story of a friend who found a frog in her shower. “…she picked it up and carried it in her cupped hands to the wet grass outside. The frog was leaping in terror as she carried it, and probably did not understand the quiet comforting words she spoke to it along the way. I think this is one of the best examples of how love operates when we are most afraid and doomed, carrying us to a safer place while we pound against its cupped hands.”
Not only are we the trembling frog at times, but we can also be the hands that reach out and uplift others who are anxious or alone, hungry for food or hope. Love is our essence. “Love is evolutionary, survival of the species. Not-love is killing us….Maybe love is our very atmosphere, the one energy that Einstein describes as being that which is the only thing there is. That would mean that love is like Wi-Fi, always and already here (if a bit wobbly sometimes)…” (Anne Lamott, Somehow).
We can connect to this energy through meditation and develop a knowing that it is our source and our substance. It’s about remembering Love and releasing anything that is not love. Not-love is trying to seize the day and destroy the beautiful tapestry of our shared humanity…..not-love for each other, not-love for the planet, not-love for ourselves. Not-love is rooted in fear. God is only Love, and we come from God.
When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, with purpose and meaning. When the personality comes to fully serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment. -Gary Zukav (Seat of the Soul)
Take heart, my friends. Love is holding and carrying us through trembling uncertainty. We have the power to stand for love through our words, our actions, and our votes.
And we must.
Grit & Grace,
ej
Elisa J. Juarez
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