meanderings

breaking the ties that bind....

LOVE RECKLESSLY. LIVE COURAGEOUSLY. COMMIT YOURSELF WHOLEHEARTEDLY TO SERVICE TO A LOVING GOD.

powerful words. and dangerous, we think.
the greatest fear for the first is that we won't be loved in return. that somehow our love will be wasted, ourselves shamed. it is strong temptation. one i've succombed to time and again... but love is never wasted. love is never shameful. loving others is how we truly love ourselves.
there is nothing more euphoric that our feelings of love for another person. it uplifts us. it feels us with warmth. it makes us love ourselves.
there is little more hurtful than fear of rejection, of somehow failing to make another person love us.
it is tha ability to love for love itself that is freeing. love that exudes from us because we are loving, not for what we need to receive to nourish our love. love that feeds off itself and is independent of the feelings of others. if someone does not love us, that is their prison. it does not have to be ours. we can and must love ourselves to be a good lover of others. otherwise, we are looking to the other for something we need. our concentration cannot be on the need of the beloved.
and that kind of loving requires outstanding courage. courage none of us possess and all of us can strive for.
the last part is hope, and faith. that this kind of life truly is the life our creator designed us for. that this is the seeking which sparks in every human soul.

powerful thoughts.
the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

... a matter of life and death

there really is no experience of death. there is only the absence of life.

i planted a weeping willow in my front yard. i love those trees. tree climbing was a favorite childhood pasttime and playing under a huge willow tree in my aunt's front yard was one of my favorite activities. my yard is not a perfect habitat for a willow and we had three or four years of pretty severe drought when it was young, but i watered it when i watered nothing else because i knew that without water it would not survive. that weeping willow was so beautiful this spring. it gave me immense pleasure and i felt the time and expense of seeing it through the drought was well worth it. it had matured and we were experiencing a plentiful spring of rain.....

and then in less than three weeks, my willow tree was dead. i have no idea why.

the great mystery of our lives is death. why does life end? how can something or someone be alive one minute, and then not be alive. we call it animation. the visual manifestation of the life within. and the mystery, that all religions attempt to answer, is where does life go when it leaves? .... and its sister question, why?

actually, the sister question bothers me less. we certainly don't live on a planet that could sustain unending life. in the plant world, it is decay that provides the food for life. and of course, it is plant material that provides our food for life... whether vegetarian or carnivore... no plants, no food.

as we age, this philisophical question becomes more personal. we have more experience with it. it is within our foreseeable future, if not for ourselves, certainly for our parents. how do we deal with this inevitable loss of this amazing gift of life?

... some live in determined denial to the very end. some, i think, embrace it as a needed rest from a hard journey.

for most of us, dying is a slow business. the body and mind begin a slow deterioration. i guess this is given to allow us time to adjust, time to say good-bye to life and to be ready to pass over into the great unknown. people of faith believe in a coming home experience, but it is a singular adventure. Even those who have experienced brief absences of life can only tell us of the mind's first sensations as life leaves the body.

life is a mystery. absence of life an even greater one.