Love Tokens
This morning the world looked like this! Shiny, a bit misty, yet bright and available. I feel fairly certain that the reason it looked like this is because I spent the weekend celebrating love. It is easy to forget how nourishing it is to celebrate. And even easier to forget the power of love. In this case I had the great fortune to be the mistress of ceremonies for this celebration. And just so you know this was not a wedding nor a marriage and if anyone used those words anywhere in the town that we inhabited for the weekend, their “love token”, which was a red button, would be taken from them by anyone within earshot. The person with the most love tokens at the end of the weekend got to take home the all the flowers that were adorning the place.
The two people who created the weekend were quite explicit on the subject of love. The love they proposed to celebrate was a love meant for all; for everyone present but even more for everyone in the world. Now this is a cause near and dear to my heart, how to love everyone in the world. You might, if you think of love in the ordinary way, think this is a bit childish, silly or even foolish to say that you want to love everyone in the world. How is that even possible?
In the Buddhist tradition, we think of love as the combination of kindness, compassion, equanimity and joy. These four qualities that make up the experience of love are referred to as the Four Immeasurables. The Four Immeasurables are thought of something beyond personal emotion, something that cannot be measured but can be experienced. And they are considered to be the result of our willingness to be open and empathetic to the pain and suffering of the people in our world.
What happens when we allow ourselves to experience the pain of others? What happens inside you when you see someone suffering? When you truly allow in what others might be experiencing whether that be sadness, anger, confusion, fear, anxiety, or joy, I would bet that your natural response is to care for them, to love them. What might happen if you celebrated that impulse, noticed it more often?
Over the weekend, we nourished and celebrated the natural human desire to love others, to care for them and share in the wonder and woes of the world. Through the great generosity of spirit of two individuals who came together to celebrate not only their connection to each other but also their commitment to love, each of us got the opportunity to participate in eating together, swimming together, talking together, dancing together. As the mistress of ceremonies, I was humbled to witness the diversity and devotion of these two people with their families and communities. As a result, I found myself nearly speechless just at the moment when I was required to speak!
But here are a few words I did say:
Love is a way of holding each other, caring for each other and a way of finding the freedom to be exactly who we are. In this way, love is not something that can be contained or restricted, but something that can grow, expand and enrich one’s entire world.
Allowing love to be our natural response, our innate response to the dynamic and ever-changing circumstances of each of our lives, allowing in the possibility we can love without reservation, is a choice, a scary choice, a beautiful choice, and in my world, a healthy choice.
And when you love, you let it go. you put it down. you show your shoulders what to do with sky. and love is how, and love is when and and love is why.
Nothing more needs to be said. But if you want to join me this Friday, Renovation and Reclamation Day #3, the theme is letting go. Please be in touch if you want to join me in meditation, contemplation, conversation and creation!
