Love – Page 4 – unabashedly female

September 7, 2011September 7, 2011

Horror as the Foreground to Wonder

Living, Dying, Grieving

This post isn’t full of the beautiful…at least not the surface beautiful. But stick with me…

This is my edge…

We’re all living, we’re all dying, we’re all grieving, we’re all transforming. It’s life’s nature, death’s nature.

Life is always dying and being reborn. To grasp this truth, to live in this truth is to be fully alive. To never take this life for granted. It’s beauty, it’s power, the fact that none of us know. Can we embrace this? Live it? Touch death as we live life? Touch life as we die? Be with each other in whatever stage we are in? Really be with each other…

I don’t know have any answers. None. No flowery words. No insights.

But what I want to do is share what some beautiful women are writing about grief, dying, illness, death and life… and how reading their words is impacting my heart.

Unconscious to the edge…

The fact is we are alive and we are dying. Some of us are closer to death. Some of us are dead while we live, unconscious to the edge we exist on. Who’s to say what it is to be fully alive?

Joseph Campbell wrote,

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about.”

In one of his segments with Bill Moyers, Campbell shared,

Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.

There’s a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it.

“…not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it.”

I write this post as a somewhat ‘healthy’ person, so I am seeing and writing through the eyes of someone who unconsciously, and perhaps somewhat consciously, tells herself she still has a fairly ‘long’ time to live. In reality, this is BS. I do not know how long I have to live. Even writing these words and saying them aloud to myself doesn’t even begin to cut through the normal denial that is here about death.

I do experience the absence of time, the eternity of which Campbell writes.

Where I have difficulty is in being with the ‘horrible’ nature of life, what my mind wants to fix, eliminate and avoid.

Campbell’s words “that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder” catch me.

Horror as a foreground of wonder.

My mind goes a little crazy wondering how you square this, square the horrors of this world with the mind’s concept of wonder. I notice that I write ‘wondering’ in the same sentence. To wonder…

In writing this, my mind fears it will sound as if I am romanticizing horror in some way, even wonders whether it is wise to include the word rapture and horror in the same post…

I recoil from the horrors of the world. I want to fix them. I want to save others. In reality, I don’t want to be with the horror itself. I don’t want to open to it.

As Campbell reminds me, the horror is the foreground to the real wonder of life, the awe-inducing wonder…

And yet, in those moments of life when the horrible knocked on my door, I did open the door. I opened to the horror, as much as I could. And in opening to it, I caught a glimpse of this wonder… the beauty in the darkness, the love in the horrible, the peace and silence that is always present all around this foreground of horror.

I do know Holy Is All There Is, yet my life, at least right now, is filled with days full of so much love and light. I can be content to sit in this ease, content to not open my heart to the horror…and it is here that I skim the shallow waters of life. Can I open to the rest of the wonder of life willingly, not just when it knocks, but now, of my own accord…

Krishnamurti said:

There must be no escape from it of any kind, no intellectual or explanatory justification – see the difficulty of this, for the mind is so cunning, so sharp to escape, because it does not know what to do with its violence. It is not capable of dealing with it – or it thinks it is not capable – therefore it escapes. Every form of escape, distraction, of movement away, sustains violence. If one realizes this, then the mind is confronted with the fact of `what is’ and nothing else.

The mind does not know what to do with its own violence…

This is my edge. This is the edge I recoil from…

I share words…

So I share others’ words, words that open me to this edge, words that help to open my eyes and heart…

In Pema‘s series, “Memory to Light“, she shares her experiences with grief, death, violence and life, leading up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Benita‘s new blog, The Useless Uterus or Chemo Brain Musings (she’s not yet sure what to call it) recounts her life as she moves through her days of chemo and healing.

Rhonda, a woman of 42 years who is dying from MS, is sharing her writing as she dies. Her writing is brilliant. Her words cut to the chase. And in responding, or attempting to respond by way of commenting, I found myself ‘trying’ to write to her, not quite sure how to share how her words have touched me. Perhaps it’s a mixture of things: partly that she is in the active stages of dying as I read her words, and perhaps because I don’t really know her. There’s an element of feeling like a watcher, reading her experience from this place of one who is ‘alive’ and not dying. My dear friend, Jeanne, is hosting these writings, offering a place for us to bear witness to Rhonda experiences and our own opening to how to be with…

And as we near this 10th anniversary of 9/11, Meg Worden shares her experience of 9/11, a day that was book-ended by her getting sober the day before, and conceiving her child two days after.

I do know…

What is true, what makes tears come, what causes my heart to open is the raw desire to serve life, to know the sacredness of life, to honor it…and I must admit, I don’t know how to do this… and I know there is no how.

I am this life, both the horror and the wonder. When I cut myself off from one, I can’t know the other. When I cut myself off from one, I can’t know the totality of what I am…I can’t feel this totality…

And, you?

September 4, 2011September 5, 2011

Holy Is All There Is

Buttering the Sky

Slipping
On my shoes,
Boiling water,

Toasting bread,

Buttering the sky:
That should be enough contact
With God in one day
To make anyone
Crazy.

~Hafiz

This morning, a foggy easy Sunday morning here in the city, Rachelle Mee-Chapman asked this question of her friends:

What feels like prayer to you today?

Such a rich and provocative question…

On Sundays…

While prayer is for each day and every day, today is Sunday.

On Sundays, dance is my usual form of prayer, the dance floor my church. There is no dance on Labor Day Sunday, though, as the big Sausalito art fair takes over the town.

So, today I write. The empty page is also my church, and writing another form of prayer.

Today, I sit in this warm and inviting cafe writing, and I consider her question.

Voices

I listen to voices sprinkling words through the air, trying to communicate as best they can what wants to be said.

I hear laughter.

I hear English and French.

I hear people who are hungry and thirsty, ordering nourishment for their bodies.

I hear people hungry and thirsty for more than food, perhaps communicating with each other to feed more than their bodies…to feed their souls.

Noticing

I’ve been noticing, just this week, how much I ‘think’ my life.

When I think my life, my body feels tight, constricted and stressed.

When I ‘think’ my life, I push and strive.

When I ‘think’ my life, it is just me by myself trying to carry the heavy load that I learned to carry. The load is indicative of something I have to do, somewhere I have to get, someone I have to be. It’s all some kind of illusion my mind keeps creating.

Life as Prayer

Rachelle’s question and Hafiz’s words bring me back to reality, the reality of Life simply unfolding…Life as Prayer.

I posted Rachelle’s question on my Facebook page, and Emily Silbert answered with this:

Today it was the mundane act of grocery shopping and stopping the automatic list-driven purchasing to get myself an orchid. i stopped and looked into it and it was holy, i was holy, the whole grocery store was holy.

Holy is right here, right now.

What if holy is all there is?

August 27, 2011

Pierced

My heart is not my own. It belongs to a far greater force than a single human being.

August 24, 2011August 24, 2011

Dahlias, Feminine Flesh and Love – August’s Potpourri

dahliasinthewindow — Dahlias in the Window

Good Morning!

This is a little August Potpourri post.

A potpourri is both

a mixture of flowers, herbs and spices used to scent one’s space and

a more generic mixture of things.

This post is both. We’ve got flowers, spice and…not sure it’s an herb, but then we get to mix it up however we want. I’m hoping this potourri scents your space and day with love and beauty.

The flowers… Dahlias in the window of the flower shop that’s just down the street from me. I love walking by to see what the latest arrangement is. And, I love capturing an image of both inside and outside, looking through the glass both ways.

::

I’m guest posting at 3Sisters, today:

The Mystery Robed in Clothes of Sacred Feminine Flesh

Representation

Humans use representations to make up, in their minds, what the world is like, how people behave and even how they should be and what they should do. We create images in our minds of how things are, and then we compare ourselves to those images, and more often than not, see how we donâ€™t measure up.

There are so many representations of women in our world; so many archetypes; so many images and idols. How do we come to know ourselves anew, broken free of the gazillion ways women are represented in the manifested, constructed and imagined world?

Pin-ups & Centerfolds.

Rubens & Picasso.

Cosmo & Vogue.

Ms & Jezebel.

Mary & Qwan Yin.

Eve & Pandora.

Marilyn & Sophia.

Beyonce & Brittany.

Venus & Aphrodite.

Buffy & Xena.

Kali & Durga.

…continue reading at 3Sisters…

::

I’ll close with a reminder…

Do all of what you do with the great love that you are.

Many, many blessings to you.

August 22, 2011August 27, 2011

Discovering Love for Self is Sacred Work

I’ve wanted self-love and fought self-loathing for most of my life. Both have been hard to experience, but for different reasons.

Self-loathing does its devious work undercover. I can’t say that I’ve ever really known, consciously, that I loathe myself; but, I can say that I’ve struggled with finding myself ‘deserving’. The self-loathing part was undercover; what showed on the surface was a lack of confidence and being afraid to show myself to the world. It was only fairly recently that I came to feel the stuck emotion of self-loathing. It had been buried deep down for a long, long time.

Self-love has always seemed out of reach. For me, affirmations never worked. It has always been much harder for me to love myself than to love others. And it wasn’t until I began to look at the deepest and darkest places within me that the light of love within began to really shine. It was then that I realized I could never really love another until I discovered what it was to love myself.

Doing the work to find true self-love can be daunting, yet it is sacred work. It is deep, soulful and compassionate work.

When Jenn Gibson, founder of Roots of She, asked me to contribute to her new e-course called Self-love Warriors, I felt called to add whatever I could to what she was creating. One of the greatest things about Jenn’s creation is that it can be experienced by yourself or in community, or both. Learning to love oneself isn’t easy, yet it is important work. I believe Jenn has created something that is going to help many of us deepen this sacred work.

In the course, I’m the break-out guide for the fourth week, honoring the sacred feminine. Coming to know, in a deeply profound way, that the sacred is within you is one of the most beautiful ways you can honor and love yourself, other women and all of life.

I am an affiliate for the Self-love Warrior course, meaning that when someone uses the link I’ve provided here to purchase Jenn’s course, I receive a percentage. That being said, I feel it’s going to be a great course. Whether you decide to join us or not, I hope you dive in and open yourself to the deep well of love inside your own heart.

June 12, 2011

Where No One Sees You

Found Art in Big Sur, CA (artist unknown)

~~~~

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
~Rumi

February 7, 2011February 7, 2011

the Note of Love

Spring is here. At least it feels like Spring is here, even if it is February 8th. St. Brigid’s Day, or Imbolc, is thought to be the beginning of Spring in Ireland…and maybe here, too, judging by our weather.

The beginning of Spring does something to me. The lovely bits and pieces that I’ve kept warming by the fire during the cold and wet winter months come alive with the first warm rays of the sun.

It was a beautiful 72 degrees here, yesterday. We took a walk out at Lands End, the line of coast that wraps around San Francisco’s northwestern outermost tip. The light was amazing, as evidenced by the colors and shadows on these trees, above, just prior to sunset.

We had dinner out at a wonderful Thai restaurant, finishing it out with Hot Coconut Cake, a specialty recipe from the owner’s Mother-in-law in Thailand. The owner told us this cake is not sold in restaurants in Thailand, but is only available as street food.

Yesterday, was a day filled with so much life. And,

This past week, so much of my focus has been on dying, on being with, along with many others, someone I loved and respected deeply as he let go into death. Sitting in his room at the hospital, I could smell the blossoms just outside the window. The warm temperatures invited the trees to blossom, and blossom they did. The moments were a bit surreal.

In today’s walk, I could see signs of life springing up again.

I came home to find this very important video by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a Sufi Sheik I quote quite often. He is a mystic who sees what is coming, and shares profound guidance as to how to be of service during these times.

I can’t share the video here; but, you can watch it here. Please do. In fact, watch it a few times. He is sharing such important information for us all to know.

In the video, he asks,

“Do you work with what is dying, or do you work with what is coming into being?”

A powerful question, indeed.

In Llewellyn’s video, he shares that the note of love that hits the bell of creation has changed, and with that change, “life will begin to manifest in a different way.”

As I sat with Emmett, last week, it was so important to me to love him, deeply. In those moments, it felt so totally clear that what I could offer was love and letting go. I could be with, in the state of love, without trying to save, fix or change things. For if it is really time to die, then the greatest gift is to not interfere, but to let go.

November 21, 2010November 21, 2010

Light Upon Light

The days are short now. The bright sun of summer is a far distant memory. Add fog, cloudiness, rain and suddenly I find myself getting the light from bulbs rather than rays. Yes, I live in California, but even here this time of year brings a decidedly different orientation to light.

For most of my life, I’ve leaned towards the sun for my light like a many-limbed plant, hungry for nourishment. It’s only been in the last part of my life that I’ve discovered the rays inside.

In the most difficult moments, I’ve stumbled around in the darkness inside. There was a reason I hadn’t ventured in willingly. That darkness is really dark. The rays aren’t apparent at first…at least they weren’t for me. I fumbled in this darkness many, many times never finding anything remotely resembling the light outside that I was so familiar with.

One time in particular, these inner rays finally broke through. It was in the midst of one of the most heart-wrenching experiences I can imagine – my grandson’s fight for his life, which began when he was twelve hours old.

When the light broke through, there were no bells and whistles, no sudden chorus of voices, no wildly evocative images, no mystical experience. There was only a deep darkness that gave way to radiant rays so bright, that my heart knew it was held, held by something so much greater than anything my mind could imagine. And in this holding, I discovered a strength born of a thousand suns.

This radiance came when I let go of my struggling. My baby grandson, my first grandchild, lying in a full size bed so completely covered with hospital trappings,Â that we could only stroke his fingers or one cheek.

I was at the end of the many ways I had found to cope in life with difficult things. What I had tried didn’t work. I desperately wanted to be there for my daughter and son-in-law, someone who could provide loving support and nourishment. I wasn’t much help if I couldn’t be there for them.

I marched myself right down the hall to the hospital chapel and went inside, closing the door behind me and vowing not to leave until I was able to come out in a different frame of mind. I vowed I would come out able to be really available to them, to my grandson and to whatever lay ahead. I don’t know how long I was in there, but I prayed. And prayed. And prayed. I had never been someone who prayed like this, but it was completely instinctive.

I prayed to be shown a way to let go of my struggle, to let go of my neediness so I could be truly a source of nourishment for their needs. My fighting the whole thing was simply a way for me to not want to feel what was happening.

In the deepest moments of my prayer, I stopped asking and I began to listen, really listen. And in the listening, I opened to the grace that was already there. Light upon light.

I didn’t come out enlightened. I didn’t come out as mother of the year. I didn’t come out knowing the right things to do or say. I did come out knowing something deeper was holding me. I came out having reconciled that in that moment Lucas was as Lucas was. Accepting this didn’t mean at all that I couldn’t pray and hope he would get better; it didn’t mean I was happy how things were. I did mean I wasn’t fighting it any longer.

And when I was no longer fighting life, life began to move through me. I was available. I could be with my daughter and son-in-law. I could sing to Lucas, read him stories, hold his finger, stroke his cheek, hold my daughter, hold the space.

I could sit in the waiting room for hours on end as procedures came and went, able to be with the not-knowing, able to witness other young parents and their babies, some of them surviving, many of them not.

I could say hello to the little ones who live at Children’s Hospital, those who have no hope of ever leaving, feeling my connection to them rather than allowing my discomfort, my not wanting to take it in, my wanting to fix it and make it different get in the way of what was there…their beautiful souls.

The three months Lucas was at Children’s Hospital in Oakland seemed an eternity, but he survived against so many odds that they called him the miracle baby. They do amazing work there. He is now almost ten. Talk about light; this boy is radiant.

For me, this light has come in the letting go, in the surrender, in the giving up of what I thought should have been. It’s come in the genuine desire to let go of my wanting so that I could serve another. In those moments, what was born was born through me into life.

For me, this light is strength, but not strength that breeds pushing and striving. It’s strength that flows.

Sometimes with the day-to-day life stuff, this inner light seems distant; yet when I come back to now, back to what is really happening, it’s always here. It always was here.

Image courtesy of Narrow on Flickr, under CC 2.0.

SupportStoriesButton This post is part of the Support Stories – Strength From Within at Square Peg Reflections, by Karen Casterson. Be sure to take a moment to read some of the other inspiring stories about finding strength from within.

November 11, 2010November 11, 2010

Her

Thirty-seven years ago today, 11/11, I held her in my arms for the first time. She came into life, I became a mother.Â It was a day that changed me forever.

Holding her in my arms for the first time, I knew a love I’d never even comprehended prior to that moment. A love completely unconditional. A love that would deepen over the years as she grew into womanhood, left home, married, became a mother, and handled life’s challenges and graces with such strength and courage.

Sitting here writing this post, I can’t begin to put into words the depth of this love for my daughters, I have two, and their children. It is completely unconditional. While in my day-to-day life I may do things in very conditional ways, not always showing up in the moment in a way that reflects this unconditional love, the limitless depth of the love in my heart is always here.

…

Four years ago, I was sitting in an ashram in India. Amma’s ashram. I was sitting in meditation while Amma gave darshan. Long lines of people would show up every day she was at home in her ashram, when she wasn’t touring the world giving hugs. Sitting in her love-filled temple, I was profoundly moved. My eyes came upon an Indian woman and her small child. They were sitting across from me, on the other side of the temple. She was holding him in her arms while he slept. She looked like the Madonna with child. A beautiful light surrounded them, a light not visible with my eyes, but wholly visible with my heart.

In that moment, this memory of the moments I became a mother, and the love that filled my heart for my babies, once again flooded my consciousness. This time, though, it wasn’t inside me, it surrounded me. It held me. It was me, and I was it. This love was so deep, so full, so rich that everything in my awareness was bathed in love.

Sitting here, writing this post, I feel it once again. This love. This universal motherhood consciousness that Amma speaks of. It is in us all. We are all bathed in it. Women and men, whether parents or not, are all universal mothers to all the world’s children.

…

Thirty-seven years ago, I was seventeen. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was meant to give birth to this child. I knew it in a place within me that was ancient and wise, a place that knows what I am here to do. As a young mother, I drew upon a strength and wisdom that flowed from this ancient place, a fountain of wisdom and love. I drew upon the sacred feminine consciousness within me, within my body, within my heart.

I certainly was far from a perfect mother. Far from it. Yet, something deeper flowed through my imperfect actions. Something unconditional infused my ways of loving conditionally.

This female intelligence, this wisdom, strength and knowing, runs through all women. We know what is right for our souls. We know what is right for our bodies. We know what is right for our children. When we are in touch with this wisdom, we know.

I knew this was right for me, for my soul and the soul of my daughter from some deep place within me. No one else could make this choice but me. It was the right choice for me, and that says nothing about what is right for any other woman.

…

So much that has been done through the structure and paradigm of patriarchy has clouded and obscured our female intelligence, our feminine ways of knowing. We’ve been cut off from the sacred feminine. We’ve been led to believe She is not here, that we can’t trust our own knowing and wisdom. She has been kept down in the dark. Yet, don’t let that fool you for a moment. This female intelligence has always been here. She is now rising into the light, up into consciousness.

She is living and breathing inside you right now. Somewhere you know this, even if you can’t quite yet trust Her.

Open to Her. Receive Her. Remember Her in your cells. Let Her bring forth your tears of grief for having lost touch with Her. Let Her bring forth this universal wisdom within you, so that you may shower your own heart and body with Her love. For Her love is your love, Her wisdom is your wisdom, Her ferocity is your ferocity.

…

Happy Birthday, beautiful daughter, wise woman.

…

And, you?

I’d love to hear about your female intelligence. What you know. What you see. What you feel. We all learn by knowing what another woman knows of her own experience.

…

image by K. Kendall, licensed under CC2.0

October 29, 2010

Extending Love

We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present. ~Marianne Williamson

There are many parts of the psyche that don’t trust love, and perhaps even fear love. These parts have all sorts of reasons why we shouldn’t love another, ourselves, or even the world as it is. This fear of loving keeps us separate. To these parts, this separation is safety. To love, this separation is painful.

Separation is only an illusion, yet to the psyche it feels very real.

As I move deeper into awakening to the true nature of things, and to the divine essence that breathes and expresses through this female body, the realization that I keep myself separate is growing more keen. The ways in which I don’t extend love are becoming painfully clear to me.

Withholding love is painful. Feeling separate from others is painful. Feeling separate from the world is too painful to continue to once it has become a conscious strategy, rather than something I do out of habit.

I feel so much love in my heart for the world, yet somewhere inside there is still a part that fears extending this love. My favorite Mary Oliver quote, I mean my absolute most favorite quote of hers, is this:

I walk in the world to love it.

Yet still, there are places where my heart retracts.

…

In my last post, I Bow Down to Love, I wrote of the power of love:

“This quiet, yet insistent voice within doesnâ€™t bargain with me. There is no bargaining with it. It only shares one step at a time. It asks us to trust in something greater than ourselves. It asks us to trust in love.”

We are being asked to trust in love, and I sense we are being asked to go into those places where we learned not to trust in love, for those are the places that hold us back, those places where we didn’t receive love. It’s not about rehashing these stories, for I know all too well that the story stays alive as long as we keep breathing life into it.

It’s about feeling. Feeling those old places in our bodies where we stuffed the pain of not receiving love, and perhaps even developed a strategy that feels vindictive, a strategy that says I won’t love because I wasn’t loved. Being with these painful places, as we would be with a small child that is in pain, a child that wants to be held and loved, so she can know that place within herself.

But it’s also about trusting in love, trusting enough in love itself to extend it. Not the juicy romantic kind of love, but the love that is the basis of all of existence, the love that is the basis of life. It is love that calls to us. It is love that is at the heart of the divine mystery in things. It is love that is at the heart of the divine mystery in you. It is not ours to hoard.

…

Love all of Creation:

When you love all of existence, you discover that mystery within you. I am learning this. Slowly.

I came across this piece from Dostoyevsky, and something became clear.

Love all of Creation

The whole of it and every grain of sand

Love every leaf

Every ray of God’s light

Love the animals

Love the plants

Love everything

If you love everything

You will perceive

The divine mystery in things

And once you have perceived it

You will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly

More and more everyday

And you will at last come to love the whole world

With an abiding universal love.

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I can see that love begins with something true. There are things we truly love. For me, these are my children and grandchildren, my partner Jeff, my family, my dear close friends, my clients, my work. I also love the wind in my face. I love redwood trees, roses, peonies, dogs, cats, make that any animal (except snakes and lizards, which I’m working on). I love painting and writing. I love exploring new places. These are things I feel great love for.

And after reading Dostoyevsky’s passage, I can see that the love within me, the love that I extend in places, but not in others, is not because of those people and things I love, it is the very source of life that moves through me. Sometimes it is easy to think we love someone a great deal because of who they are; rather, the capacity to love comes from within us, and can be extended to all of life. In doing so, we come to know the mystery in all things, that mystery that is no different in the other than it is in me.

…

A recipe for extending love:

Begin with something small. Begin in the places where we know what it is to love, to extend ourselves. Love the light. Love your child. Love your dog. Love the way the leaves turn riotous colors. Love the way your beloved’s face shines when you listen, truly and deeply. Love the way you feel when you give without needing to get. Love the way your soul moves when you hear that one song that gets you every time. Love the way you laugh. Let yourself love those things you already love, without question. Feel the naturalness of it, the immediacy of that love within you.

Just begin. Notice loving. How it just happens, naturally. In its own way, through you. And when you notice it,Â allow it to spread to something else. Love the thing that lights you up. Then the next. As your love spreads, as you see how much love is inside you, and as you share it with those things that naturally light you up, you will begin to see it everywhere. Ceaselessly. It doesn’t matter where you begin. Just begin. You see, all of creation is the mystery. We can begin anywhere, and from that place it can spread to new places, if we’re willing to trust in love.

I’m going to follow this recipe over the next few months, consciously dining on the fruits of the extension of love to see what happens, for this extending love brings more love in return.

I invite you to join me, and to share with me here what you find.

…

image courtesy of Paulo BrandÃ£o on Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0