I Promise, We Are Ready

Babies cry. Flowers stretch. Kettles sing.
The shadows on the wall at sunset grow.
Guns fire. Breath runs out. Grief rises. Fear grips.

I whisper these three words again and again:

Love lives here.

The earth shakes, she crumbles, she steadies.
We wake up and the news flashes.
Light and darkness - they trade places.

The clock ticks fake time. I whisper again:

Love lives here.

I follow these syllables one by one. They are my japa mala when I’m searching for the center of my heart in times of instability and crisis.
I touch my lips to each word and listen for the secret of impermanence.
In the hungry hush of groundless being, we have one anchor and it is the practice of loving. This practice involves a seemingly simple core truth, yet it proves to be a giant stumbling block for pretty much…all humans.

Everyone deserves to be loved.

Light melts. Animals sound. Bodies rest.
Alarms wail. Trees bow. Tides rush in.

How do we find love when there is anger, terror, devastation or grief between us and the love that weaves us?

We hold a council in our heart for the meeting of everything.
We sit tenderly beside the judgment and the pain.
We call out to love when we can’t feel its presence.
We name what we seek to remember.

This human experience - it is a mysterious skydive. To love in the face of impermanence is astoundingly courageous and it contains within it the code of eternity.

Oh beautiful songbirds, let’s be patient together.
We are recalling something as we fall.
We are the gasp between two places and love is a tunnel.
We are time travelers, but time is false, connections are real and they are leading us beyond life and death, into a luminous origin story.

Doors open. Knowledge dissolves. Memories surface.

The spacious moment curves its finger.

We are dreaming a deep dream.
We are the circle circling.
We are home and I promise, we are ready.

Love lives here.