Sunday, December 30, 2012

Become Love


Christmas is just a few days past, as are the lives of 20 innocents in a small town in Connecticut.
            
As unimaginable as that crime is~~and let's all pause now and once more pour love toward those who've lost so much~~we know that senseless deaths are not uncommon in this world. 16,000 children, for example, die daily of hunger~related causes. That’s a child every five seconds, at least two since you began reading this essay.
            
The outpouring of grief over this thoroughly preventable statistic, though, isn’t the same. It’s as if, to the human mind, death from violence is somehow worse than death from indifference, or death here is worse than death over there.
            
I don’t imagine the Christ whose birth many of us recently celebrated would see it this way. I suspect, too, that he wouldn’t agree that the proper response to the Newtown shooting is more guns, any more than he’d say the cure for world hunger is increased disregard. No, his teachings would lead us in a different direction entirely. He would move us away from fear, ill will and apathy, and toward love and a felt connection with one another.           
            
But how do we do this? How do we operationalize Christ’s call to love one another?

Obviously, it is essential that love guide our every action, love that is not a mere concept, a should, the simple doing of what seems right. Love is defined as “profoundly tender, passionate affection.” If such a quality permeates our actions in the world, we will live true to Christ’s teachings.
            
But to do this requires another step. To refine our external actions, we must transform our interiors. We must become love.
            
While the prophecies surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar did predict a time of adversity and cataclysmic earth changes, these were seen as a necessary purification for the dawn of the next world age. 

This transition has begun. We are all part of it, and we get to choose how to cast ourselves in this grand happening. In each moment, we decide. We can nurture fear and self~interest, fully anchoring ourselves in a way of being that, having outgrown its usefulness, is now falling away.
            
Or we can further develop our capacity for love and connection, our Christ awareness, our own Christ Consciousness. With our thoughts and our actions, we can craft in each moment a new world, harmonious and vibrant.           

Across this sweet Earth of ours, so many of us are choosing the latter. Let's choose it again~~and in earnest~~right now....

I see you, precious reader, pausing for a few moments and, with heart overflowing, envisioning a world where love guides us all. And I see you doing so throughout this day and in all the days to come.

And I see us all, together and in each individual moment, making it so. Amen.

A joyous and peaceful new year to us all!

Blessed Are!

Loanne Marie

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blessed are the peace makers...
Happy New Year with much love surrounding us all.

Loanne Marie said...

Blessed, indeed...and may we all do our part! Thanks for reading and writing. Namaste!

maggiebeth said...

Dear Loanne,
Am i jaded? Is my heart hardened? Am i unable to embrace this New Awakening? I struggle with your vision that we have a choice. What about all those people whose lives are like mine...basically a mess. Trying to Love, trying to see The Whole, trying to align themselves with the Light. But the kids need to be fed, the cat just threw up, there's no milk...Again, struggling to make ends meet, dealing with depression and anxiety....How do These people join the throngs of those committed to Holding the Light? How can We participate when we are always ducking the blows, taking the hits...

It just bugs me so much to Want a certain kind of life and be so hopelessly removed from it. I get angry when i read/hear thoughts that make a god-centered, Light-minded, spiritually-enlightened, contemplative, positively-anchored life sound so attainable ~ so relatively effortless. When i find it so elusive. So what the frig is my problem?

Answer the question....My problem is inside of me. My problem is that these fucking tears and anguish, these fruitless feelings of anger and resentment build up inside , in spite of my best intentions....And instead of being able to sit and think, all i can do is lash out, hit back, cry..... AND I'M NOT EVEN HAVING A PARTICULARLY BAD DAY!

Loanne Marie said...

Wow! What an honest and heartfelt expression of the angst we humans feel! I know you speak for us all, as each of us falls into those dark places, most of us on a regular basis. There's no denying, though, that some of us visit there more often than others, or that the outward variations in our lives are stunning and make ya wanna just shake your head~~or gnash your teeth and yell, "Why?!!"

I don't have any simple answers for these kinds of big questions. I don't know why the world is as it is and why some folks struggle so. I have grown content, though, with those questions remaining unanswered, at least for me, for now. The response that fits for me is not very deep or exciting...that we each, within the muck of our own particular lives, open again and again to what is good.

As far as the particulars in your comment, you obviously are NOT jaded and hardened. There's too much passion and yearning in your words for those adjectives to fit AT ALL. No, you are in pain and operating under the false impression that others are not, that most everyone (but you!) has this thing figured out and enjoys full~time Love and Light. Not in MY world!

What worked well for me~~just yesterday, in fact, when I was struggling~~was to take to my cushion. I sat and breathed and intentionally opened~~not to what I desperately wanted and did not have (there's the makings of an affirmation that won't work!), but to what I CHOSE to believe was right there, like the sun on the other side of a winter storm. In doing so, I cared for my heartache, nurtured it as a good parent does for her child~~and stopped sticking pins in the baby! The racket gradually stilled and I was able to reclaim what had previously seemed so out of reach. Yesterday, it went smoothly, but sometimes it's a day~long practice. Still, ya do what ya can.

So when I write about choosing, I mean simply that. Choosing. In every moment we choose. I never said nothin' 'bout across the board success!!! I do, though, want us all to stop sticking pins in the baby, the baby that is our small human self, trying its very best to do as its asked to do.

I suspect, dear margiebeth, that you are being quite hard on yourself. My assumption is that there are many times you ARE Love, that you see the whole, that you are in rather good alignment with the Light. When you're not, you're not. Such is the journey of evolving consciousness. We get it. We lose it. We find it again. And over time, we become more skilled at the whole thing and can do it more easily. Until we can't.

So, please be gentle with yourself. Start with love at home, by being Love to YOURSELF. Begin there. Don't try to sit and think. Hold yourself and your pain as you need to be held. And stop hurting yourself more by punching yourself every time you fall short of your intention.

Thank you so very much for writing. I know there's a tendency for folks to out~groovy one another in responses to blogs like this. You told the truth of your current moment, one I suspect every reader can identify with. THANK YOU! And Hugs and Light and Love streaming your way!!!

Marilyn Cardone said...

Loanne,as always, thank you for your inspiring, thoughtful comments. I'm responding to you and to your reader maggiebeth. It's so easy to beat up on ourselves when we're not what we or the world thinks we should be. Someone once told me--and I found this very helpful--"Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides". We don't know what others are struggling with, and so often our struggles are invisible to others. Some of us have harder lives, more challenges, more pain that we are recovering from; if anything, we need to be gentle with ourselves about that.
I live in CT, and as horrible as the Newtown tragedy was/is, there is tragedy all around our violent world. There are children living in fear and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan everyday. I agree with you, Loanne, that we somehow manage to forget them and see their tragedy as somehow not as bad. I pray that we will all live more consciously, compassionately (to ourselves and others) and gratefully.

Loanne Marie said...

Oh, I love that~~Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. Perfect!

As I often say, this human thing is quite the trick. I continue to wish us all well!

Marcia Beachy said...

This essay was beautiful. I found myself taking deep breaths as I read it, knowing that your words carried vast wisdom. Thank you, once again, for sharing your thoughtful perspective. Personally, I hope many are touched and gently inspired as a result of reading the column.

Loanne Marie said...

What a wonderful compliment, Marcia. You have, indeed, taken to heart the idea of choosing Light in each moment by deciding, on this day, to shine some my way. Thank you!

Rockey said...

Hi Loanne, Thanks for all your writings and for sharing your wisdom, as usual!
"Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides" is such a great phrase. Thank you for that, Marilyn!
I think it is easy to get wrapped up in the illusory views of the world. Television is a big perpetrator of the grand illusion... do you know any genuine people that act/live like those portrayed on tv? I don't. The people that surround me live messy, imperfect lives and most of us shop at Goodwill.
The people who have lovingly accepted me into their lives are able to share their pain with me and I, in turn, can share mine with them.
It takes courage for maggiebeth to share her pain; (thanks maggiebeth).
The first noble truth in buddhism is that life is suffering. Jesus also said that we will suffer in our lives.
Don't believe the crap you see on most commercial tv shows and read in most commercial magazines... it is all illusion... hope this rambling helps. For some reason all these comments have touched me this week!

Loanne Marie said...

Thanks, Rockey, for reminding us about the Buddha's no nonsense First Precept and the fact that Western "civilized" society~~and that, only recently~~is rare in its assumption that humans oughta always be happy and that something is wrong with us if we are not. Suffering happens.

And yet, as the Buddha and others point out, there is a way out of suffering, a way of working with our suffering that transforms it, a perspective on suffering~~and life~~that begins to shift our reality. My current understanding of the idea of illusion is that, when we're snagged by suffering, we are only seeing a part of the picture. When maggiebeth and the rest of us are in the place she wrote her comment from, we have become temporarily blinded to the fullness of life. Our spiritual practice is a commitment to work with suffering in a way that pulls us out into that larger vision~~or drops us down deeper.

My guess is that you were touched by the comments this week because they dropped us deeper. Thanks for going there with us and for sharing your own wisdom.

Claire said...

What beautiful, intense, authentic comments have poured forth as a result of your wise words, Loanne. Thank you everyone. All words good for me to read right now - a community of folks sharing what's real ... real-eyes-ing how precious this life is. These posts reminded me of a Mary Oliver quote and one of her poems:

Mary Oliver quotes
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver