I was packing to leave my daughter’s home.
We had arrived the evening before having dodged two blizzards.
It’s a drive of about 10 - 12 hours.
But soon after we arrived one of us felt ill. And then tested positive for COVID.
(FYI: We had blessedly mild cases.)
As I re-packed, hoping to leave before we infected the household, a thought appeared:
“This is what love looks like today…”
Since then I have been looking at my life and actions from the point of view of: What does love look like now?
Picture this…..
It’s the holiday season. Your preparations are complete. The larder is filled to overflowing (who knew a fridge could hold so much?). Friends and relatives come and go. Like the tides.
Now.
Drop a snowstorm into the scene.
Everyone’s plans have gone poof! Dissolved as Naomi Shahib Nye said, “like salt in a weakened broth…”
But not ours. We had planned to stay home. A beloved arrived by train and Uber, the only methods of transportation still running, albeit 4 1/2 hours later than expected. But arrived. Safely.
For us this season love looked like inviting a friend who had hoped to be with family to come for Christmas Eve dinner and games.
Love looked like other friends whose plans fell through coming for Boxing Day leftovers.
And love shone brightly when sheltering a beloved and their children whose life had gotten hard. Too hard.
In each case love looked like sharing what we had, stretching and making do with what was in order to offer solace to family and friends with broken plans.
When we invite love to move through us, we become love.
Love looks like making beds, changing sheets, washing said sheets and remaking beds with quick turn-arounds.
Love looks like driving across town with a left-behind toy so a child won’t be disappointed.
Love looks like serving at the food pantry, buying, preparing and serving countless meals to those who would have otherwise gone without.
Love looks like driving back out to the store to get the right size when a beloved had picked up the wrong package.
Love looks like preparing and offering special foods, foods that wouldn’t ordinarily be in the household to ensure that a guest feels at home.
Love looks like cleaning and organizing unruly corners of the house as a gift to a beloved who is troubled by clutter. Rather than seeing it as an obligation or a tiresome chore. What a surprise, how invigorating!
Love looks like stepping aside from our personal routine to tend to a beloved. Or a stranger.
Sitting with as friend over a cuppa, holding space. Simply listening.
Love looks like supporting a friend struggling to set a boundary, even if it inconveniences you.
Love looks like letting go when the situation calls for it, even if it means putting off a desired outcome.
Love looks like caring for our own selves: leaning into our practices, the specific things we each do to keep ourselves grounded and present for our lives, listening to our inner voices.
I frequently give homework: to students, to clients, to whomever is willing to experiment with the way they show up in the world.
I suggest that each thing they do,
each thing that we do,
do it as an act of love.
When you do the dishes, wash them as an Act of Love.
If you are folding the laundry, fold it as an act of love.
Take a bath as an act of love.
Notice what happens when you step into love,
when you make each action,
especially the simple ones,
the repetitive ones,
an Act of Love.
What does your love look like this holiday season?
Sophia.
ReplyDeleteThe question what does your love look like today created a birthing space.. a womb perhaps for words and feelings, answers actually to come forth.
It's important to contemplate what love looks like day by day, moment by moment, season by season. I think your words have reached into a part of myself that is critical. For Love not only is the joy, the happy, the obvious overreaching ideal... Love is sacrifice. Love is simple. Love is taking a task and doing it with compassion. Especially when it is difficult. Love takes the shape of what you and the people around you need.
The world as of late has been a complicated and wounded place. I often think about the fact that if we did care more about one another and inherently ourselves, the planet would also feel such a shift. All of the solutions in life at least through my lens are inconvenient. For it has been carefully crafted that we must meet expectations, everything should be compartmentalized and binary. At least in the eyes of those who decide that trajectory in which our economy and system is operated.
There is nothing inconvenient however, about doing the right thing. I could go on forever about your prompt and what is coming up for me.. I will however and this was saying my love looks like everything. In all ways, always.
End this by saying*
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