Finding ourselves in midwinter – mbleak or not – how are we called to love, as intentional response to the challenges and gifts of our lives?
I write looking out at Lake Erie, a morning after two days of snow and iron-gray skies. A sunny day? No. Yet morning light plays behind eastward-moving clouds, illuminating all with colors beyond words.
I started the day reading about the Russian army learning from western criticisms of their military disorganization, gearing up for more efficient destruction of Ukraine, democracy, world peace. Do we dare be open-hearted, to love?
Reading about mass shooting after mass shooting in the US, avoiding stories of attacks on the rule of law from within Congress. Do we dare be open-hearted, to love?
Buddhism challenges us to make a vow to accept the world as it is – even as mass shootings escalate and Russian military strategy mutates like Covid.
Accepting the world doesn?t mean looking away. It means upping our capacity to love: To bear witness. To face hard truths. To allow Life to rage and weep through us. Being fully present to the heartbreak opens the channels in us, empowering us to Love life in all its evolving forms, so we may respond on its behalf, as individuals and together.
We set the intention, make the vow, knowing we will break it again and again. Forgiving ourselves and vowing again.
This is the hardest commitment of all: To love the world as it is, not the way we wish it were. Mourning the needless suffering and accepting the limits – our own and those of our time. To make this vow, I need to be lifted like I was this morning, re-energized by morning light after the storms, illuminating all, building my capacity – our capacity – to be present, and to make new channels for the streams of love, together.
The gift (and task) of UU spiritual community is to love the world as it is now, to love ourselves as we are now, and to hold us as we learn how to respond. Are we ready to make that vow together – for 5 minutes, an hour, a day, a lifetime?
In love,
Rev.Mary
