[I recently shared this poem and a Lectio Divina type exercise - you can read it here. In this post, I share my own experience and thoughts. Again, you are most welcome to share your experience with the poem in the comment section below.]
Deep Dream
I’ve spent many years learning
how to fix life, only to discover
at the end of the day
that life is not broken
There is a hidden seed of greater wholeness
in everyone and everything.
We serve life best
when we water it
and befriend it.
When we listen before we act.
In befriending life,
we do not make things happen
according to our own design.
We uncover something that is already happening
in us and around us and
create conditions that enable it.
Everything is moving toward its place of wholeness
always struggling against the odds.
Everything has a deep dream of itself and its fulfillment.
–Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings (composed as a poem by Meg Wheatley)
My Redux
As I sit with this poem several things bubble to the surface of my heart. I suppose in simplest terms this could be summed "Trust Life."
I would qualify this trust as a trust in the God-who-loves; who works in and through life. Who, like a master recycler, is working in all situations for the best possible outcomes. Love is the divine energy that permeates, animates, and is the trajectory of the Christ in us, the hope of Glory. You see, we came from love, and to love we will return.
Nothing. Nothing created, or above, things past, to come, heights, depth, debt, governments, pandemics, climate crisis will ever separate us for the God-who-loves. Yet, life happens, and life ends. Life is full of great joys and great suffering. As Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is a time for everything. These are not to be ignored or spiritualized away.
We embrace it.
Feel it.
We mourn it.
And in time, we give thanks for it.
We are never promised a painless easy life. Those promises are best left to the cultural hucksters; both in the marketplace and in the pulpit. These false expectations must be released so we can live into what is, and it is there we experience greater wholeness and the joy and peace we so desperately long for.
We have something much more lovely. Much more robust.
Even in the shadow of fear of death, we are not alone, and even when it may end in death, love reminds us that even death does not have the final say. Baked deep within the cosmos is the hidden seed. The seed of self-giving love. A seed full of potential for more love, moving towards greater wholeness - amidst the struggle, for the time being, a constant companion.
You see, struggle is not always caused by sin. Struggle seems to be a very tangible reality of the cosmos. A part of it is birth, it's a part of the flow of evolution, it's death and rebirth. Struggle can be a friend - an unwelcome friend. So we let this unwelcome friend work in us. We let it stretch us all the while leaning into the divine invitation contained within the hidden seed. Responding to the invitations of the Spirit to choose love in every situation. "To listen before we act."
In love there is bandwidth. A multiplicity of loving possibilities to choose from, creative loving possibilities to co-create a kingdom of love throughout the cosmos. Love is the life-blood of all that is. It is the river flowing from the beginning and returning to its source bringing healing and wholeness wherever it flows. Love calls to love, and we will return to love.
Trust life as it forms the river banks through which we experience the flow of love.
