Playing in the field of LOVE and cultivating intentional HOPE
I am not on a soap box. I am writing these words to myself and wanted to share them with you. Behold Beloved Becoming. I am the beloved. You are the beloved, and we are all, always in the process of Becoming…
Weaving a life lived for community. Putting relationships at the heart of your life. Learning the art of inquiry…’say more’…s l o w e d down conversation. Learning how to “dance” with each other by listening deeply to each other’s stories. Being moved and changed by them.
Is it possible to really hear and witness another’s humanity and not begin to love them?
How can we build bridges? Learn forgiveness? Love the enemy, the“other” and ourselves? How can we learn to take nothing personally and what does that really mean?
Each pebble creates a ripple. Each drop in the bucket helps to fill it to overflowing. “We all do better when we all do better”.
What if the darkness we feel ourselves surrounded by is not a tomb but a womb? And we all need to do is to push together to birth a new world? What if we could all “let go” of our “right position”?
The world is not black and white; Rumi says “Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field, I’ll meet you there”.
Be changed (flexibility), be moved(openness), collaboration(cooperation), creativity (individual & collective genius), choice(autonomy), help each other shine(generosity), listen deeply(compassion), everything’s an offer(interdependence), and let go (trust) are all the core agreements of improv. Life is asking for us to become excellent improvisationalists! These are our human capacities. They can be developed and they can make it possible for us to harness intentional hope.
We need to be able to imagine a better world to birth a better world. We need to see where we want to go in order to get there. As crazy as it might sound in these dire times, we need to learn to PLAY together. To connect in new ways that stimulate and nourish what we can imagine and then bring it into form.
The rabbinic sage Hillel the Elder said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” JFK paraphrased it to “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Mary Oliver said “What do you want to do with your wild and precious life?”
I recently watched one of the most inspirational TedTalks I have ever seen. Please take the time to watch https://www.ted.com/talks/valarie_kaur_3_lessons_of_revolutionary_love_in_a_time_of_rage
Valarie Kaur is an American activist, documentary filmmaker, lawyer, educator, and faith leader. She is the founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. Kaur’s debut book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, was published in June 2020. The book expands upon Kaur’s TED Talk.
2020 hasn’t been a year where feeling hope or joy has been easy. Not for most of us anyway. But our deepest essence is resilience, life loving life, and the willingness to contribute to the well-being of others. And that’s joy. Joy is the gift of love.
Reaching into the depths of your heart and soul, touching the tender, most vulnerable parts of yourself, you will be touching your essential goodness. See it, share it, sing it, dance it! Have the courage to stay open and in touch with joy even when there is so much devastation happening all around us. It takes courage to shine bright, lovingly and with compassion in the face of fear. Remember that wonderful bumper sticker “Random acts of kindness and senseless act of beauty “? We need this now, more than ever!
Keep practicing being fully present. When we care about what is going on for another and we show up to listen to whatever longs to be heard, we give the gift of love.
There are no strangers. When we take the time to see, hear and acknowledge another; when we really hear their “story”, there is no way we can not love them. Rumi says “All a Sane man can ever care about is giving Love!”
What is needed now might just be hard gritty heart wrenching work. Accessing our joy and cultivating hope, will give us the juice to get the work done. We need this to fuel the dreams and wishes and hopes for the future.
As Angela Gorrell reminds us, joy and happiness are not the same thing:
Joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even — sometimes, most especially — in the midst of suffering. This is because joy is what we feel deep in our bones when we realize and feel connected to others — and to what is genuinely good, beautiful, and meaningful — which is possible even in pain. Whereas happiness is generally the effect of evaluating our circumstances and being satisfied with our lives, joy does not depend on good circumstances.
