I Choose Love

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”  —Mother Teresa

 

 

Thanks to all who responded to last week’s writing,  Don’t Abandon Yourself.  I’m struck by the many ways people relate to this…and how important it is for all of us, at different times, to learn the lesson of not abandoning who we really are.

 

Also, I want to let you know that I am no longer struggling with Lyme Disease in the way I wrote about a few years ago….many things have shifted in my health, and I’m grateful for more and more days of vibrant energy (even with occasional setbacks, as I wrote about last week.)

 

All the teachings I’ve developed have come from this path of opening to illness as a teacher, and not abandoning my body when she’s at her weakest.  In learning to love the most fragile parts of myself, I’ve found possibilities of healing I could not have imagined.

 

Love is the doorway to so many kinds of health.  And, love is under attack in our world now.  Hatred and fear are coming out of the shadows and showing their faces in broad daylight, in large numbers, in a highly organized fashion.  I am wrestling about what to write to you, this week.

 

My mind, my heart and my body are very aware of the attacks in Charlottesville.  I am a Jewish woman.  My next door neighbors are African Americans on one side, Hispanic on the other, two doors down live a couple of gay men who are married to each other.  This is the world I live in.  I wrote my first play based on the life of Holocaust survivors.   My work has been to help us heal from the impact of trauma and genocide.  I am working hard, this week, to keep myself out of fear over what is happening in my country, right now.

 

How do we, as sensitive, caring souls, who want to be true to ourselves and write as a way to heal ourselves, our communities, and our world, respond to this level of hatred and violence?

 

For me, it is important to return to the sacred center at the core of all life. These times are times to move through the fire and burn away what’s no longer needed.  Much is being purified and let go.

 

Choosing love over fear has never been an easy choice.  It’s true personally and it’s true on a global scale.  Hate crimes stem from tremendous fear, and violence breeds more fear.

 

At every moment, love is possible.  At every moment, we can turn away from fear.

 

What happens, when you recognize the fear in your own heart, and surround it with love?

 

What happens, when we recognize the fear in our world, and surround it with love?

 

I  believe that our own hearts are the crucible for change.  Our own hearts are the first place to turn—not the last step, and not the only place—but each heart is a living hologram of the world.

 

Each of us knows what it is to be afraid.  Each of us knows how to turn away from our self and how to turn back.

 

I choose love.  I choose love.  I stand for love.  I stand for love.

 

Moment by moment, with every step I take, with every choice I make, I create a world I want to live in, or I destroy it.  Personal choices lead to political choices.

 

I do not have answers to the hard questions we face today.  I only have an awareness, that choosing love is something that matters more than ever.  When I say, I choose love,  it is not a hollow phrase or a cliché, it is a nitty gritty reminder of how I keep walking.  How do I choose love, now?  How do I choose love, now?  How do I care for the part of me that is afraid, and not bring more fear into the world, or into my own life?

 

Do you have questions, about how to be alive today?  Do you have questions, about how to respond to hatred when it kills?

 

I support many levels of action.  I support many groups who are organizing with integrity today.

 

And, I believe that as a community of writers on a path to heal ourselves and heal the world, we must honor what it means to live a life that heals.  We must come together to support each other to value the sacred in all things, especially when the sacred is being violated. Hate crimes violate the sacred in life.  If you choose to uphold the sacred today, you are doing something that helps the energy of the world return to balance.  Each of us affects the whole, even if it seems like in very small ways.