My husband is wiping tears from his eyes as I walk in. Having just finished an obviously moving essay by Loren Eiseley, he asks if he can read it aloud to me. Of course I say yes.
Eiseley is a naturalist who brilliantly filters scientific truths through a poet’s soul. The essay my husband reads is The Bird and The Machine. In it, Eiseley describes his choice decades ago to free a sparrow hawk he’d captured the night before, and the “unutterable and ecstatic joy” of its mate as they reunify in “a great soaring gyre” in the sky far above.
Love comes in many forms, does it not? Mystics tell us that love is at the center of it all. According to Rumi, "All the particles of the world are in love and looking for lovers (while)...every part of the cosmos draws toward its mate." Jesuit philospher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes that love is "the most mysterious of the cosmic forces (and)...the physical structure of the universe." And the poet Evelyn Anglim reminds us that this love, "already exists in full measure, everywhere, all the time. It cannot be cultivated...It's already there and as big as it can get."
All the world's religions, each in the language of its culture and time, impart the same truth. So why, then, do we struggle so? Rumi urges us not to spend too much time on such questions. "Don't open the door to the study...Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
And so, we kneel and kiss the ground in whatever way is our spirit's longing. For me this morning, it is in receiving the exquisite beauty of my husband's soul as he makes his tearful way through Eiseley's sweet words. In meditation last night, it was by opening to love as my mind stilled. And last week, awe filled me as ten delightful women met for a Summer Solstice Retreat and wove of their unique individual strands a thing of exceptional beauty.
Regarding this omnipresent love Anglim writes, "Our work is to remove the blocks to our recognizing and living it, living out of it." What a gift it is that such love is right here, right now. For if it is everywhere, then it is in this very moment, reaching for us even as we reach for it. Loving us even as we love. "What you seek," Rumi tells us, "is seeking you."
Eiseley ends his essay lauding the splendor of living beings who “bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope (and)…cry out with joy (or) dance in the air with the fierce passion” of reunion.
It is my delight and my pleasure to be a living being sharing the planet with you and others, as we dance through the mystery of it all, never fully understanding, but tumbling into love just the same.
Love!
Several extras for you today. Enjoy!
Here is a link to Eisley’s essay, though my husband began his excerpt on page 604 with the line "We came into that valley through the trailing mists of a spring night"…The Bird and The Machine
And here is a link to one of the Rumi poems excerpted above, which has depth that will elicit a pondering worthy of the subject…Desire and the Importance of Failing
And this is the full text of Evelyn’s poem, from her book Whispered Secrets
The Love I Speak Of
The love I speak of
already exists in full measure,
everywhere, all the time.
It cannot be cultivated.
Not in me.
Not in you.
Not in anyone.
It's already there and
as big as it can get.
Our work is to remove
the blocks to our recognizing
and living in it,
living out of it,
living it.
And the essence of all
those blockages is fear.
All fear is illusory,
though in our human experience
it feels so real.
"Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists."
~~from A Course in Miracles
7 comments:
LOVE It!!
When I was cleaning out our family home after the deaths of both my parents, I found a yellowed paper my mother had cut out and stored away. It was a poem about telling me you love me now. Not when you put it on my gravestone. I actually found two of them and sent them to my two sons. A coincidence that there were two, I don’t believe so. In our family we never part without saying I love you even in a text message. When my companion was lying on his deathbed he looked at each of his children and myself and said I love you. What an awesome gift he gave us! Even today sixteen years later I still get tears in my eyes and have trouble swallowing when I write this. Faith Hope and Love but the greatest of these is love.
Thank you both for reading and for writing!
This one bloomed in my heart. Thank you for such beautiful words.
I love the image of your heart in bloom! When something blooms like that, we know we have not received new information, that we're remembering something we have known always. Thank you for reading and for writing...and for the image of a heart in bloom.
I've been slow to find this posting on my computer, but it leaves me breathless. I too get weepy over those reunited birds. And the wonderful act of love that reading out loud is to each other. Whew!!!
I think our longing for love and our response when we experience it in our own lives or see it in the lives of others (like those reunited hawks), tells us that love is our true state. The strength of our response seems signify that we come from love and are primed for its return...or our return to it...and in those moments, we are RECOGNIZING and RE-MEMBERING ourselves into it.
And yes, reading aloud to one another is a favorite pastime in our home, a "wonderful act of love" indeed. We've even done it by phone when one of us is away.
Your comments are welcomed any time, Sam. Thank you for reading and for writing!
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