“how to be alone…”

i loved this video by filmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis called: how to be alone. (click highlighted link to see video.)

there’s such a gentle grace and joy about it: the naturalness of embracing our lives, feeling at home wherever we are, the essence of peace, prayer and praise altogether. Here are some excerpts from the poem:

“If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

Take silence and respect it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.”

o…to cultivate the rich spaces of aloneness

the sweeping music of silence

voids giving way to a rush of peace

this passage from Mary Baker Eddy’s writings speaks to it: “My sense of nature’s rich glooms is, that loneness lacks but one charm to make it half divine — a friend, with whom to whisper, “Solitude is sweet.”

“a way in the wilderness…”

“Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah

a way in the wilderness…

a way.

there will always be a way.

one of my favorite definitions in Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health is of the word wilderness.

she starts it out with these words:  “Loneliness; doubt; darkness.”

anything but these…please, anything but the vacuous three…

flight ensues

frantic scattering

no way out but here

battle or be still

gnashing of teeth or surrender

silence.

an inkling takes root within

the definition continues:

“Spontaneity of thought and idea;

the vestibule

in which a material sense of things disappears,

and spiritual sense unfolds

the great facts of existence.”

what now waits within you to emerge

what light dawns

taking hold of heaven

this, not that, is what you’re borne for

this, not that, is what you are

suddenly darkness, doubt, loneliness

are on the run

scattered, dispelled,

running for cover

where none is,

for all here is sheltered in light

all here is the holy ground of home

all here includes the tender hands of omnipotence

pointing out the moment

showing us the way

showing us our way

a way of possibilities,

many mansions,

no shortages

no competition

excess of excellence

and multiplication of joy.

“As the children of Israel were guided triumphantly through the Red Sea, the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear, — as they were led through the wilderness, walking wearily through the great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the promised joy, — so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul…” Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy

embrace the wilderness.

take it up in your arms.

love the dawning it is prompting.

turn your back on darkness,

shine,

shine,

shine shine shine

out from the light of Love.

“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” Isaiah

“love wash over a multitude of things…”

i’ve been thinking about the relationships in our lives: the ones that come and go; the ones that stay;  the ones that deepen. these ones…the ones that are refined, rarified in the fires of life, emerging with a fierce, patient and generous purity. the kind of love that sees you through and past the darkest of times, the kind of love that sees with such laser loving clarity that it is a beacon, a reminder, a homing signal, a kingdom carved of and built on the things that don’t fall apart.

i’m grateful for the people who have taught me about love–love that is unconditional, unrejectable, given freely. love that springs from infinite Love; love that knows no bounds, no measurements, no retraction, no withholding. love that includes the unfettered completeness and self-containment of the divine.

when my husband herb and i got married, the readings included a passage from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy that seemed an unusual choice in some ways, but i couldn’t let it go. it says, “Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love.”

now some ways down the road together i love the passage even more…the grace that comes, all pretense shed,  hopes and yearnings walking in broad daylight, the offering our lives become as we are beckoned to grow, to rise, to be, to recognize, to nurture, to honor, all that we are meant to be.

there is no match for love borne of purity, love that cements all intent and centers its heart on the great Love: the unquenchibility of omnipotent divine Love. it awakens holiness, peace, forbearance, beauty, generosity, power, and poise. it washes us in the waters of self-surrender, and we find ourselves wholer, truer, sounder than we knew before.

this love is everywhere…never dependent on finding the right life partner, but proceeding from the covenant within us, the discovery of a oneness with all good, our place in the Most High, our home in God. the love that anchors and proceeds from Love, guides and guards, nurtures and refines, reminds us ever of our abundant completeness…opens us to an overflow of sweet affection, spilling forth from Life, never fragile, needy, vacant, or unworthy–but dwelling in the very heart of Love, loving, calling us to its love, calling out our love, shedding the confines of separateness, flooding us with the infinite assurances of light. as it says in Song of Solomon, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

these words from a  song by Sara Groves capture it well:

“Love wash over a multitude of things
Love wash over a multitude of things
Love wash over a multitude of things
Make us whole…”

when it comes to contentment…

when will it be

and what does it look like

and what is it made of

and how can we find it

and will we even know what it is

isn’t it like faith

an undergirding presence trying to make its way to the light

inner inklings that guide us like waymarks in the dark

isn’t it like hope

the fresh springing within us, the involuntary impulse to be

doors and windows inviting us to open

isn’t it love

the gentle breath of approval hovering ever beneath harsh, dark thoughts of despair

an embrace of air, of life, of stars, of trees that sing our place among them

here in this space, where loneliness, where longing, where hunger try to consume all light…

here in this very place, enough, presence, grace, abiding, to share. enough to drink and drink beyond our fill, with more left over than we can see, with more to give, with more to love, with more to live.

contentment has no strings, belongs to no body, no thing, but rises up, the essence we are within us to own this now, this here, and to spill its sweet presence all around us. no strings, no space, just the pressing presence of faith that nudges us, hope that encourages, and love that reminds and reminds and reminds us that we are loved, and of Love, and through Love, and in Love.

I love this poem by e.e. cummings:

     why
     do the
     fingers 

     of the lit
     tle once beau
     tiful la 

     dy(sitting sew
     ing at an o
     pen window this
     fine morning)fly 

     instead of dancing
     are they possibly
     afraid that life is
     running away from
     them(i wonder)or 

     isnt't she a
     ware that life(who
     never grows old)
     is always beau 

     tiful and
     that nobod
     y beauti 

     ful ev
     er hur 

     ries