Fall in Love

Lying in bed the other night, the words of one of my favorite prayers came to me out of the blue:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.

Why they showed up past my bedtime, I do not know, but so they did. Perhaps needing more than to be uttered, but to be realized. 

What is love and how do we feel it? I think this word is thrown around too often and not often enough. I try not to say the word when I don't mean it, as not to confuse understanding. But I am more guilty of not saying Love enough. I often forget, am too caught up, or perhaps lack the courage to form the word. Regardless, of whether it is exercised or not, Love exists and is very real. It is manifest more often than not all around us, pulling us to and fro by its invisible, forceful strings. How do we know it's Love? It's coming home, or so a good friend said to me. It is the feeling of security; deep knowledge of goodness fueled by a sense of freedom to be with abandon. 

It happens everyday. Maybe just once, but usually more. Falling in Love isn't foreign or rare.  Yet, do we recognize it? Sometimes not. Sometimes so. Perhaps the words above showed up to disturb my sleep in order remind me of what I forget to acknowledge. To remind me to take note of Falling in Love. 

I fall in Love in the morning, when the clouds from the ocean are slow in their departure and my tea kettle squeals as I run my fingers over clean counter tops. Solitude, possibility, Love.

I fall in Love after my judgment condemns the mother picking up take-out at nine o'clock at night with her young son in tow. Shouldn't he be in bed? I notice that I am in the same line. On my way out, I see them, mother and son, tossing a ball back and forth in the blackness of the parking lot. Love.

I fall in Love as I open my fridge. The pictures on its front that catch my eye are of familiar faces that have taught me what this thing is all about, Love.

Fall in Love, stay in Love, and it will decide everything.

NotWhatNothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way. - See more at: http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/prayers-by-st-ignatius-and-others/fall-in-love/#sthash.IFPJsCt6.dpuf

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way. - See more at: http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/prayers-by-st-ignatius-and-others/fall-in-love/#sthash.IFPJsCt6.dpuf

Passing on the Sun

How are you? So simple a question, yet is it ever asked seeking the real answer? Of course one is told it's socially acceptable to answer, "I'm Fine", "Okay", or "Great". Anything more than one or two words is seemingly excessive. What if someone broke the mold and replied they're not okay? We are told to be "okay" or make it seem so. Yet who in this world actually has it all figured out? Perhaps we need to carve space for authenticity; to allow the unokayness of ourselves to permeate, to become real, and eventually  to make us whole.

Getting ready to roast marshmallows with a group of students the other evening, I took a moment to sneak off and catch the sun become one with the blueish gray of the Pacific. Sunset is often the time I feel the most joy, the harsh light leaves to make way for purple, orange shadows that subdue colors and cast a softening hue. I love this time of day. When the sun sinks below the horizon, I imagine the next set of people who get to watch the sunset. It is as if we pass the sun on; sending it miles away to allow others their revelry, yet always with the faith it will come around the next day and we'll get to do the whole thing over again.

As subdued tones fade to deep indigo the orange glow on the horizon completely disappears to a black sky. Recently, I had the opportunity to stand, freezing cold, in a field with my head tilted back and gaze upon innumerable stars. I was also able to view star clusters light years away through a telescope. The lens offered me a chance to look back in time thousands of years to light that had long ago flickered and yet was only now reaching our eyes. What did it look like now I wondered? Was it even more spectacular?

Yet the light from the stars is invisible to the human eye when the sun shines. We have to let it go. We have to pass it along to others in order to have the stars, much like the stars must one by one fade away into a lightening sky so they may fill another dark night.  It's change you see. It is relinquishing the incredible that makes your heart pound for the spectacular that takes your breath away. This is the unokayness.

The sun for the stars and vice versa. However, with that comes frustration of knowing, of being, of doing like there is nothing else in the moment. It's loving the dipping orange ball, the green flash, the darkening of the sky, the blanket of stars, the light on the Eastern horizon; every bit of it. I want to know, to be, to do with certainty-faith that it's good right now and will continue to be so, much like I do on my evening runs. I know how many times I have to wrap my elastic around my ponytail to keep it from falling. I know the tingling in my right big toe and have come to expect it. I know how to micro-adjust my shoulders in order to allow my lungs more air. I know my body senses the last half mile and my feet rotate faster on their own accord. I want nothing else but all that is that hour. This sureness and presence is what I crave.

To desire nothing else but what's given. To delight in whatever light there is. To breathe hard and have that breath taken away.

 But first I must pass on the sun.