Spiritual Insights

I’m lost. Can you help me find my way?

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man s hand in shallow focus and grayscale photography

It is 4:27 pm on Sunday afternoon. The small convenience store at the corner of Hwy 17 and Ocean Boulevard is packed with customers two lines deep waiting on a single cashier to ring them up and send them on their way. She is a sweet black woman near my age that I chat with every time I visit the store.

I am third in line behind an older white man wearing a scraggly beard and walking with a slight bent limp, and a Hispanic father with two teenage girls wearing shorts, smiles, and sunburns. A young black man and his friend are behind me. The line on the other side of the store has an older white couple, a Hispanic woman talking on her cell phone, an older black lady wearing jeans, a God Saves T-shirt and a ball-cap, and a well-dressed younger couple speaking quietly in Russian.

Two miles away, in the center of downtown Myrtle Beach, SC a protest ends without major violence or rioting after arrests and releases, a few hours of tense stand-off and news reports, and a slow push forward by a police line that encourages dispersion. I watch the local Facebook news feed for hours. Then, make this quick run to the nearest convenience store for cigarettes before the 6 pm curfew takes effect.

I am in line. We are all in line. Each of us trying to observe social-distancing rules and patiently wait our turn in the tiny overcrowded store. My mind is trying to sort the images and realities of the day. I’m looking for a way to make sense of the deep emotions of anger and pain I’ve seen and heard. The questions of meaning and how to address these issues and help heal them in my community float across my consciousness.

How it is possible that we are still battling these issues of race, prejudice, and inequality in the year 2020 my mind asks. I cannot fathom an answer. The sad pain over the reality of these deep, ingrained wounds and behavior our nation and its’ people are suffering is too overwhelming. I am floating between rational thought and simple prayer as I stand in the line, waiting my turn.

A young black man in his 30’s walks in the store and steps in front of everyone, seemingly oblivious to the lines of people standing there. He asks the cashier a question:

I’m lost. Can you help me find my way?

My breath catches in my throat as I feel everyone tense around me. From behind him, the older white man with the limp and scraggly beard, reaches and puts his hand on the mans shoulder. In a deep Southern accent he says, “I’ve lived here all my life son. Maybe I can help. Where are you trying to get to?”

The whole store seems to breathe one long sigh of relief as they talk and the man is soon on his way to his destination. Both men show nothing but respect and kindness to one another during the interaction. I am almost in tears at the gift of this moment. Hope comes back into my heart. I believe we can somehow find our way through this … one person-to-person interaction at a time.

I think about the question, “I’m lost. Can you help me find my way?” It sums up the surreal place the people, our nation, and the world seems to be at in this moment. We are all lost and needing a little help to find our way. It starts within each of us and moves outward. It is the simple truth of Gandhi’s words, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

man person people old

 

Photo One: Photo by lalesh aldarwish on Pexels.com
Photo Two: Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

how she loves

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love heart flowers spring

As the mirror loves
The face reflected –

As the water loves
The sun that warms it –

As the lake loves
The night that chills it –

As the air loves
The lungs that breathe it –

As the peach loves
The mouth that tastes it –

As the word loves
The pen that writes it –

As the poem loves the poet
That hears it speak –

 

~Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Sparrow

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brown small beak bird

He came to land
so gingerly and brave
on the chair-back
beside me (reading Rumi) —
at a table near the fountain.

Then,
hopping down and around
the edge of the table,
a hand-length
beside me
as if
he knew there was
an uneaten cookie
inside my book-bag  —
and asking
so sweetly and gently —

What could I do?
But
reach into the bag,
pull the cookie out, and
crumble it across the table
as a sacred offering
for this invitation
to love.

 

~March 2020, Market Common, Myrtle Beach, SC

~Photo Credit: Flickr on Pexels.com

A Stranger Who Is a Friend: Seeking the Beloved

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Glass3

“What you seek is seeking you.”  ~Rumi

 

A stranger who is a friend I’m just now meeting brings me a gift. He reaches in his pocket – reaches his hand out to me – places a piece of the living world in my hand. It is warm from being in his pocket, from the heat of his energy. It fits my hand perfectly as I stare at it and then into it and through it.

An opaque beauty of swirling movement and lines flows into my vision. The warmth of endowed energy moves into me along with the images: first, an eye looks back at me: then, an outline of a bird: then, a volcanic landmass: then, a riverbed that explodes into the Universe twirling. And, finally, in it’s deepest secret revealing, what does this gifted treasure show me? Love.

This love so bright my heart beats deeper and my lips form smiles. Laughter breaks free and moves out my mouth. This love is the same voice of love in my ear all week saying that my favorite Shiva Lingham stone is to be gifted to this person when we meet. I explain this to the stranger who is a friend as he sits down on my couch.  I do not explain that I have spent a week chanting and praising and holding this stone in my hand so it would hold deep the energy of love for him when gifted.  I take the stone from it’s sacred space on my table  and I reach out my hand to his and give him this gift. Love.

The Universe as space and sky unfolds it’s magic and pours it’s love on the ground below. Metaphorically, this love is the ground where strangers become friends in the unlikeliest of ways. It is the ground that grows our greatest human possibilities and capabilities, the ground that fosters the seeds of compassion and giving in such a way that others and the world are made better by this garden. Human vulnerability and honesty are the water feeding thirsty plants so they may unfold, bloom, and burst wide into bright-colored, rich-scented flowers.

This garden crop at harvest is one of peace, generosity, encouragement, and friendship in sublimely spiritual ways. We grow and flower under the tutelage of love. She is our teacher and the deepest vast river and earth of our being.

We are magically superhuman (pure Spirit, even!) when we love ourselves and others with this Divine Love of non-judgement and non-condtioning. But this love requires two deep human offerings for maturation: we must sacrifice falsehood and safety. The irony — that in sharing our true vulnerability with others and maintaining a deep core commitment to honesty with ourselves and with others we move past the confines of self and into the joy of love that is the Divine.

The dichotomies and duality of good and bad, perfect and imperfect, enough and not enough seem to lose their strangulation hold over us; suddenly we breathe a little deeper, there is room for movement and flexibility, the control that once made us feel safe seems a lie and a bad joke somehow. We are beginning to understand the meaning of freedom. And this movement from captivity into freedom begins with a simple question: What are you seeking?

Or, translate the question into it’s deeper variations: What are you looking for? when you look at yourself, others, the Universe, the Divine. Whatever you are seeking is also seeking you? You will see what you expect to see. You will find what you think is there. What do your beliefs tell you? And how many of those beliefs still work for you? Do they bring you fear or pain, or do they take you to a place where love, joy, freedom are the common experience?

Take a slight pause to consider the questions…a minor shift in focus, one small off-step in perceptive point of view … are you seeking a stranger that is a friend? Are you open to finding the Beloved in the faces and animals and the world around you? Is a stone a stone — or can you open your eyes a little wider, look a little deeper — to the life and flow and love that hides within it? If you can pause and consider the questions a new expansion of your being will come. Suddenly, the journey opens wide a path in front of you and what you have been seeking meets you in the garden of life.

 

Glass1

Clinical Despair: Science, Psychotherapy and Spirituality in the Treatment of Depression | Psychology Today

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This is an interesting and insightful article about depression at Psychology Today: Clinical Despair: Science, Psychotherapy and Spirituality in the Treatment of Depression | Psychology Today.