Thank you, I love you.
Thank you, I love you.
On joy and suffering, our wise teachers, and loving expansively
Today I told the ocean how grateful I am that she holds us, how infinitely generous she is for constantly dazzling us.
Today a rock at the beach caught my eye and I looked down and told her how special you are.
Today I said thank you to the sand at my feet for doing the work of thousands of years to be soft against my skin.
Today I told my love how much he has shown me how to love, how loving him has taught me to love myself more deeply, how much he has helped me to know a more expansive understanding of love than I once thought I was capable of.
Today I asked myself what do I have to offer? Even when I feel that I have nothing left to give, there is always something.
Today I told my craft how grateful I am to her, how much she teaches me how to give back in service to the sacred gifts of the earth and spirits, how she grounds me and has shown me how to offer gifts and prayers to the world.
Today I walked straight toward the sun with the water enveloping my body and I said thank you for coming to light for us each and every day, forever as constant and reliable as anything the world has ever offered us.
Thank you, I love you.
I don’t ever want to share only the joy, because the joy sits hand and hand with our suffering.
The other day Amy Lee said in her Instagram post joy is my birthright. I love to think the same, I do, but then I remember that trauma, pain, and violence lives in all of our DNA passed down by our ancestors and I think that suffering is our birthright. I don’t know what to make of that, what that means about how to live our lives if both can be true, but Ara says that it’s about being able to find joy through the suffering. And I think that he’s right.
On another day on Instagram I saw a post by Mimi Zhu that said feelings are our teachers. It can be so tempting to deny our feelings their presence. When depression rolls through I am often terrified, because what if it comes to stay like heavy rain clouds that never rain?
But every time I remember that the rain always comes to clear my mind, body, and soul, and the clouds won’t always be so heavy. They come as teachers, in various shapes, with the purpose to expose open wounds and show us where and how we may learn to love ourselves and each other and the world more deeply. Sometimes I deny myself the right to a feeling because I feel that I am above the feeling, that I must be or I am not good enough as I am. But we have a right to our needs, at whatever moment of our growth we are in. We learn to honor ourselves by listening to the plants in our garden that need more water or nutrients to actualize their potency.
So I water some more or some less, I adjust. And slowly the magic unravels, the curtain is pulled back, and joy moves in like mountains.
As I grow older I grow softer. There are times when I think this softness is a weakness, when my neighbors’ gardeners run power tools or when I wish and beg for another version of the world, one that is softer, slower, and smaller. But I’ve also come to appreciate the feeling of wind on my skin, that lovely and invisible touch that reminds me just how much delight there can be, how very alive I am in this moment. My senses have begun to yield to it all, the good and the bad, the tender and the abrasive, and I cry more easily but I love more expansively and I would rather be touched by it all than to love anything any less.
Thank you, I love you.
Love,
Lucy