Voice from the Road - This is What Love Looks Like Today…..

Some of you know that I travel between my current home in SW Ontario, Canada and the family home in Massachusetts.  Time was when I did that quite a lot, but recent years have found me more settled in my Canadian home, only traveling for family occasions or to take care of my land.

So when Monday morning found me hopping into my car and ‘flying low’ down the New York State

Thruway I was somewhat surprised at the fierceness of my response. A beloved friend’s cancer had metastasized and another friend’s mother had gone into hospice. I made the trip in record time.

Sliding into my former life was immediate.  Part of me can barely understand that I live a whole different life elsewhere. I remember and wonder about that old story of someone who woke from a dream to realize that they didn’t know which was their real life and when they were dreaming.  Were they the butterfly dreaming of being a human or a human dreaming of being a butterfly?  Sometimes I ask myself the same question.

This brings me to that thing called Love.   Because it is Love that brought me to SW Ontario in the first place and Love that propelled me down the New York State Thruway earlier this week.

Love is a sticky word that, in our culture, is overused and misused.  Some of us shy away from using it at all.  Or maybe we wonder what we mean when we use it.  But actual Love, the kind with a capitol ‘L’, is a huge sensation and emotion that is harder to define than to use.  The centre of my chest actually feels as though it is stretched wide and the sensations emanate from there, connecting my belly and my head.  As though a column of ‘space’ had opened up through my insides.  And I feel very present.

This process of remembering to keep my heart open; to stay in touch with the Core of my being, my groundedness: all of these practices, which have made the foundation of my life for so many years.  These are my allies now, as I walk through the waves of circumstance facing those whom I so dearly love.

The temptation to ‘forget’ who I am and swim, floundering, in the depths of emotion is strong.  And yet my feet insist that I remain here.  How else would I be able to show up and be present for this moment?

Currently, this is what Love looks like.