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| Resting in the arms of love |
During my morning's meditation, I was overwhelmed by the intensity of the emotion. This sometimes happens during the quiet time I spend with Sophie and God. It can be frightening, like the morning I imagined i could feel the world suffering. That was so intense and intimate an experience that, with your permission, I'll put off talking about it for a while longer. But this morning's emotion was different and needs sharing, I think.
Gratitude.
As I breathed quietly, in and out, my prayer beads rolling gently through my fingers, I felt the warm embrace of a gratitude so palpable that the texture of it comforted me like the stroke of my mother's tender palm on my face. I am so grateful, I could weep.
I'm thankful to so many people that it makes me feel a little self conscious. There is something almost immodest about bragging about all the people who love me and how blessed I am and yadda-yadda-yadda. And I won't lie: when people who only know you because of the work you do or the effect you've had on their lives step up and offer generosity and compassion to you when you need it most - yeah, that kind of makes you feel like you're doing something right.
The winter before he died - he was recovering from a heart attack - my dad told me that the new neighbor had started shoveling the walk and steps in front of our house. "I've been shoveling snow for sick old people for so many years, I guess it's ok to let somebody help me for a change." He wouldn't have used the word karma, but I will. At the end of his life, my father got to taste some of the harvest from the seeds of service he had sown.
I'll never be the man my father was, but I've done my best to imitate him. And I have to say, the loving-kindness that has flowed back to me lately has tasted very sweet.
The friend who flopped me into the back seat of her new car and drove me to the ER the morning I fainted into Sophie's breakfast bowl. The neighbor who scrubbed my kitchen and bathroom while I was in the hospital. The anonymous stranger who left a staggeringly generous gift on my desk to help pay for "Bob's Cataract Fund." The loving philanthropy of an admired colleague from show-business days who made sure I had access to DoorDash when I couldn't get out to buy my own food. The lady from my water-fitness class who told me about a friend selling a car at a ludicrously low price after my own jalopy was totaled by a hit-and-run driver. The generous hands of a tenant who said, "Don't worry, Mr. Bob, I'll keep the grounds picked-up for you until you're strong enough to come back to work." The Y member who showed up at my front door in a shirt and tie, with a box of groceries in his arms. Get well cards from exercise classes filled with silly pictures loving messages, drops of sweat, and the faint smell of chlorine. Grandma-grade homemade soup in recycled take out containers. And of course, the people I meet everywhere I go, from the intensive care unit to the hardware store who stop and say, "Hey, I know you. You're Mr. Bob from the Y!"
This morning, I felt as if they were all wrapping their arms around me at once and lifting me up out of my chair. They are lending me the strength I need until I can find my own again.
Just as I have tried to do, when I'm living my best life.
And I am so grateful.
In particular, I'm grateful that I didn't have to wait until the last year of my life to experience this. My father got to taste the harvest he had planted, and that was a beautiful thing to see. But I have a different opportunity: I have tried to sow love through service, just as he did - but sometime soon, I will be able to plant a new crop using seeds from the fruit that all these loving people have brought back to me.
What I'm trying to say is this: it's all going to be worth it. All the times you give without seeming to get anything back; all the times you go out of your way to help and are met with a snatch of the hand and an turn of the heel; all the good intentions that make you feel like you should have a mile of pavement named after you on the road to Hell; they are all going to be worth the trouble. Love, compassion, kindness: these things don't just disappear out into the emptiness. They hide under the surface. They sprout. They reach toward life and become roots and stalks and trunks and branches. They bear fruit that anyone who needs to can take and taste and enjoy. That isn't just some bromide to make your soul's sour belly feel less bitter. It is a bedrock-stone-cold-truth. Love never dies.
And if you are very, very lucky, once in a while someone will come along with a poke of zucchini or a peck of onions and say, "Here. You're having a rough time. I brought you these." You will slice into one and the tears will start and you will know that you are eating an onion that you planted. One you forgot about. One you gave away just because it felt like the right thing to do. And now it's here in your hand, just when you need it the most.
And you are so grateful.
Look, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you send your love-message-in-a-bottle out onto the water and you never see it again. Maybe it won't mean anything to the beach-comber who finds it. Maybe they will sneer or make fun of such a stupid gesture. Or maybe someone will unroll your little Valentine to the universe just when they need it most. Maybe the words, "I love you. You're worth my time," will save their life.
You can never know.
But once in a while... once in a while you will hear an echo on the breeze and recognize your own love song.
And when that happens.
You will be so grateful.
As am I.
Thank you, my beloved.
Pennsy
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