Creating Life
Standing in the doorway between the ticket table and the concert last night, the music from the incredible jazz trio on the chancel washing over me, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. This is my life!
Somewhere between scheduling the termite treatments and the ceiling repairs from a leaky roof, between taxes and budgets, between making groceries and making amends – there is this gift – pure, sustaining creative joy.
On this Mother’s Day weekend, as we celebrate the creative power of women, I lift up some of the amazing, creative female artists I have had the joy of encountering as part of my work this year: Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Cindy Scott, Helen Gillet, Gina Forsyth, emma’s revolution…their creations remind me that life is a journey of choices – and that I can choose joy, I can choose to work for peace, for a world welcoming to all babies, all beings.
Beloveds, as you make your choices today, may you remember your sources of sustaining joy and celebrate your own power to create a life well lived.
TODAY!
Today I have to make sure that there is a port-a-potty for the tri-congregation Earth Day service in the park on Sunday. Today, I get to meet with community organizers at their monthly meeting to talk about a change to the city charter. Today I need to write an evaluation for a Monday meeting with an employee. Today, I will print tickets for our Mother’s Day fundraiser to sell this weekend. Today, I must pay my taxes and the bills in the pile by the door. Today, there is live, free, glorious music playing down by the river and somehow, I will get there for a little soul revival.
Beloveds, whatever your to-do list holds, may you remember that our lives are lived today. We are not promised tomorrow. Let us remember daily to celebrate the gift of this life.
The poet Alice Walker writes,
Though not
A contest
LIFE
Is
The award
& we
Have
Won.
Ah yeah…Amen.
Serious Life
Life, you’ve noticed, is serious.
In all seriousness, it kicks
your butt, then, in all seriousness
laughs about it. Life is serious.
Life has at least two suits
and a hundred pairs of shoes.
Life spends its waking hours
worried; vigilant; staring.
Life won’t take “no” as answer.
Life takes no prisoners. Except
when it does. Life is a bargain.
Faustian. Life is a dilemma,
and you betray yourself. Life
has tools–hammer, machete,
ax. Life, you’ve seen, is serious.
It’s out to beat you until you
know there’s no you to beat.
Love & Grief: Two Sides of the Same Coin
One night as the on-call hospital chaplain, I witnessed the end of three marriages, each representing over 50 years of love and struggle, as death claimed the husbands. The depth of grief of each wife haunted me for days. Was this the price of great love? Such great pain? This is what I have to look forward to after years of joy with my beloved?
I found myself restlessly meditating, pacing and praying, trying to unpack the promise of pain. In a sudden flash of insight, I realized that grief and love are two sides of the same coin – AND this is not cause for despair.
Life is about spending that coin. Loving with all my heart, grieving what is lost along the way, and loving more.
I learned to find gifts in sorrow, learning in the bad times. Hope.
I do not grieve what I do not love. Great grief is a sign of great love – and great love is a gift beyond compare. When my parents die, if they die before I do, I will mourn deeply, painfully, for years. Just the thought of not being able to call my mom and dad is enough for tears to spring to my eyes some days. But I have stood with children who do not mourn the loss of their parents, who mourn more for the lack of love they felt as a child than for the grief of their parents’ death. So I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that love is the gift. I would far rather mourn the loss of a great love, than have no love to grieve.
This really is hope for me. Not that loss is inevitable, no – but that if I love with all my being, the grief will be sharp and deep and clean. The pain will be intense and there will ever be an ache – but an ache of life well loved, not the ache of regrets nor of despair. I look to the beautiful and the sweet, because it will always lift me towards hope. The price of love is steep, but it is nothing compared to the life sucking numbness of not loving, not caring, not trying.
The great deception is that there is safety – that we can protect ourselves or our loved ones from harm. The truth is that life is mystery, change is constant, control is a figment of the human imagination. When I can be present to the truth that nothing is promised – all life is gift, then despair has a harder time getting a grip in my psyche. Each involuntary and thoughtless breath is amazing, is unearned and unearnable. Grace, by another name.
Years ago, I read the words of Anne Lamott, “I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” “Ah,” said my soul. “Yes!” My source of hope lies in that mystery. I trust the universe to be endlessly creative, to be rife with paradox, to seek generativity. Life will! In the most inconceivable places and times and situations, life insists most creatively and assertively. And death will too. Two sides of the same coin, much like love and grief.
And so, I live holding all that I love lightly and tightly.
Lightly enough that it may take its own path, tightly enough that it never doubts my love.
It is a spiritual practice.
It is a daily struggle.
It is a daily joy.
