"I will open my hands..."

"I will open my hands,
will open my heart..."

Sara Groves' "Open My Hands," sets just the right tone for this post.

We'd just gotten home from dropping our youngest daughters off at the boarding school in Colorado they'd be attending through the end of high school. It had been 16 hours of driving through Colorado, Kansas, and finally Missouri. Although it was close to midnight, we weren't tired and decided to unpack the car.

I was carrying a large basket of linens up the front steps, when it seemed as if every joint in my hands, feet, legs, and arms just seized. The slightest movement was agonizing. I made it to our bedroom before dropping the basket.

I knew that pain. I'd been crippled by it for months -- some years earlier -- when the girls were toddlers. I'd found my freedom through prayer-based treatment, and had gratefully testified to that healing in an earlier article titled, "No Time for Arthritis," for The Christian Science Sentinel. That healing had felt so complete.  I knew I needed to be very quiet and listen.

As I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands in my lap -- unable to grasp even a book without weakness and pain -- I remembered the title of that article: "No Time for Arthritis." It came from a conversation I'd had with my mother - who'd been a young widow with eight children. When I asked her if she'd ever experienced the same symptoms (of what I'd been told was a hereditary disease) she said, "Honey, I just didn't have time for that."

That day, I'd claimed for myself that I didn't have time for "it" either. I was a young mother with three daughters, a busy practice, and countless volunteer commitments. I didn't have time for it either. And that was the beginning of a change in my thought and my body that resulted in complete freedom.

So what was this all about -- almost fifteen years later? As I let that question sift deeply into my heart, this line from a hymn came gently,  like a dove lighting on my heart:

"Here grasp with firmer hand
the eternal grace..." 

Immediately One of my favorite definitions of the word "grace" joined it:

"The unearned,
and unmerited,
favor of God." 

I got it. I'd somehow thought my freedom from the crippling symptoms of a debilitating disease were tied into my motherhood, my prayer-based work, my volunteer activities. I thought I didn't have time for "it," because I was doing the right thing, praying the right prayer, thinking the right thought. I somehow thought that God was rewarding my good thinking and behavior, with freedom. But where was grace in that. Did I think that prayer, mindfulness, and good works were the means to an end -- and that end was healing?

I re-centered my heart on the fact that I didn't pray to earn my Father's favor, I prayed because I loved God -- with all my being -- and loved time spent in communion with Him. I thought about Him because I loved Him. I did everything I did, because I loved Him. That was enough. That was the be all, and end all -- of all.

If I thought that I was free because I had small children to care for, where did that leave me when our youngest children left home. God loved me more than to leave me thinking that freedom was conditional. He loved me unconditionally. He loves all of us with amazing grace. I needed to accept this fact. And I did. I quietly finished unpacking, and went to bed resting soundly on this profound spiritual fact.

When I woke the next morning I was free -- truly free. Free to grasp, here and now:

"the eternal grace..." 

For me, grace is all about God. To "grow in grace" is to have a deeper understanding of Him. Of God. God, faithful to His name as Love. God, faithful to His nature as unconditional, impartial, and universal law. God unchanging in His favor. God loving His children, not because of our deserving, but because that is what a Father does. And me, I am His grateful daughter.

and I share this, with gratitude,

Kate

"The sun never says...."

"Silent, wordless, everything was still.
You breathed us, yearned for us,
our hearts began to thrill..."

I'm not sure why Corinne May's "Your Song," brings this story to life, for me.  But, perhaps, it is the message of surrender.  Yes, maybe it is...the message of giving one's self to a greater purpose -- which she sings so humbly about -- that reminds me of that day.   Whatever it is...here's the story.

The air was soft...fragrant with the scent of wood fire, and eery with the echoing call of loons...that mid-October afternoon in 1988.  My husband was traveling in South America, and I was enjoying the "alone" time...reflectively.  

It was, for me, the most beautiful time of year.  I loved each quiet hour of walking along the water's edge on our small New England pond, and cool evenings spent staring out to sea from my sandy perch on a nearby beach.  

This particular afternoon was no exception, it was spectacular.  The bright leaves of autumn were still clinging to tree branches along the shoreline, and reflected in the still blue water of the pond.  It took my breath away.  I pulled my sweater close, making my way towards our dock, and up the pathway through the now empty wild blueberry bushes and raspberry canes.     

Walking through the leaves, I was lost in thought.  I'd been pondering a recent call from a friend.  She was in the throes of heartbreak, and needed to be with someone.  I'd invited her to come spend the weekend with me on the water, and was waiting for her arrival.  

Love and loss were not foreign, or distant, to me that autumn.  I'd experienced a fair share of recent heartaches, and I knew how thought-consuming they could be.  

I also understood how lonely it felt to suddenly not be part of a the dreams you'd hoped would soon come true. And from past experience, I knew how an unexpected breakup could leave you asking the "why" question -- obsessively.

It didn't take long until I was plunging heartlong into the past.  I found myself thinking about a heart-shattering breakup of my own.  Wondering what had, at the time, not made me love-able enough.  Asking myself if I was still "that girl."  The girls who was always trying to prove her deserving.  And remembering how much I tried to transform myself into whoever I needed to be so that "he" would want me.  Oh my, how I'd so wanted, to be wanted.    

But as I scuffed through the leaves that day, I could see -- for the first time -- that my version of a "love" story, was full of me.  If I loved someone, shouldn't I be loved in return.  If I was in love, didn't I have the right to expect to feel loved.  And not just loved, but loved best.  To be someone's one, and only, love.  To feel loved, by the object of my loving.  Me, me, me. 

It was about this time, in my self-reverie, that a stanza from the 15th century Persian poet, Hafiz came to mind: 

"Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky." 

I found my knees buckling with something akin to swooning.  It was as if all the colors in the autumn landscape started shimmering with a new light.  And it wasn't just a visual light.  It was a light that actually had sound.  It was a visceral light...one that somehow felt like the sparks from a Fourth of July sparkler against my skin. 

And it was a light that had sound, playing a song of love along the strings of my heart, my soul, my mind.  

Its message reached me in a new way as I hovered between a version of love that was full of attachment to an object of my affection,  and a sense of love that needed no personal target, radiating light without any specific object of intention.   

The sun was my teacher.  So I let her show me what love does.  How love acts. 

For instance, I knew it was a beautiful sunny day.  Hadn't I said, just that, a dozen times that morning? "Wow, what a beautiful sunny day!"  And yet, I hadn't even looked up at the sun...no, not even once...to be verify that fact.   

The reason that I knew it was a beautiful sunny day, was by what the sun was doing to...the effect it was having on...everything it touched.  Not by looking at the sun itself. 

I knew it was a beautiful sunny day, by the way the sun's light danced over the surface of the pond, brought out the colors in the asters and chrysanthemums, caused the leaves to turn and pivot towards it's warmth -- revealing all the sides of their changing beauty.  By the way it warmed the stones along the shoreline, dried the bark of the fallen tree trunk I was sitting on.  I had no doubt about the sun's presence. 

The sun was beautiful, because of how it revealed the beauty, texture, usefulness in everything it touched.  Not because it called attention to itself.  

Then I remembered a statement by Mary Baker Eddy:

"The sunlight glints from the church-dome,
glances into the prison-cell,
glides into the sick-chamber,
brightens the flower,
beautifies the landscape,
refreshes the earth."

and 

"It is Love which paints the petal
with myriad hues,
glances in the warm sunbeams,
arches the cloud with the bow of beauty,
blazons the night with starry gems,
and covers the earth with loveliness."
 

I realized that Eddy saw Love, and the sun, as metaphorically related.  And in that instant, I did too.  This was, actually, what I was witnessing in every breath of light.  Love, brightening the flowers...painting the petals with myriad hues.  

And isn't this exactly what true love...the kind of love that reflects God -- the source of all love...does.  It reveals the best in everything, and everyone, in the path of its shining.  It doesn't try to change a leaf to a twig, but it does cause the leaf to dance.  It doesn't try to own pond, it makes it sparkle.  

Until that day, love was something I wanted, and thought I needed, to feel as a sentient experience.  I needed to be the object of someone's loving...a partner, a friend, a child.  

But love, real love, like the sun is not sentient, it is radiant.  It doesn't wait to feel love from something else, in order to be stimulated to react in a way that is loving. It doesn't take in the feeling of being in a relationship with another person, and then decide how to process it.

Real love, is radiant.  It lives deep within us and radiates out from a core -- the core -- relationship with the Source of its being, God.   It is not sentient.  It does not wait for the permission of the senses.  To find the right object -- based on how it looks, what it does for a living, whether it shares interests -- to shine its light, and illumine what is good and beautiful in another.  

Love looks out from an inner vision, an inner light and sees only the beauty it naturally in the lovelight of its shining.  To radiant love, all is lovely. 

That day, by the water's edge,  I realized that real love is true vision.  It sees only what it knows is true, from deep within the fathomless well of its own light.   

Love doesn't take in a collection of pixels, a body of sentiently gathered information, process it...decide to think about it in a more loving, spiritual way...and then spit out a better picture.  Love never sees anything but the loveliness of its own radiant revealing. 

When my friend arrived she was so beautiful to me.  I realized that all I could do, was radiate peace, joy, and contentment...a vision of loveliness.  

with Love, 

kate