345°

I was supposed to spend today in a retreat with some people that I dearly love and admire. Then one of them (well, their husband, actually) got COVID a couple of days ago and suddenly I have the day to myself. I do not hate this though I was looking forward to being all together. Both of these things a unique gift.

Instead, I have spent the first couple of hours of the morning reading and writing a little. This is what tumbled out and it felt worth sharing.

Greed. Scarcity. So much greed. Craving for everything. Never enough. This pervades my life and thoughts and relationships. Wanting more. Sometimes demanding it. It is inelegance at its peak--and I am, of late, trying to focus on living with elegance (as I ponder, as I relate, as I speak, as I move). How to make the pendulum swing to a lens of abundance?

This home that I live in is a perfect example. Since we moved in nearly six years ago, my focus has been, not invariably but consistently, on scarcity. Never enough _____ (money, time, quiet, stuff, aloneness, togetherness...). This is travesty and that is not hyperbole. Because to walk out of my bedroom into the openness of this place, especially at sunrise but really any time of the day, is ABUNDANCE wide-open. The money that has graced us over these years is abundance. The peace I have cultivated in myself is abundance. I live in a well that is abundantly full--and I am floating around looking at the few inches still left to the brim.

Then, this morning, Anne Lamott had this to say: "We are loved out of all sense of proportion. Yikes and hallelujah." What? Here I am, just nosing around my existence kind of mumbling, and Anne has to stop me in my tracks and raise my eyes to what IS.

This truth used to be the center of my belief--that I was deeply loved by the force of the universe who brought all things into being and held everything together. And then I needed to leave the church and wasn't sure of this abundant love--neither of its existence or its extension to me--who was race-walking out of patriarchy. I also think I held an even deeper belief that I was, in fact, unlovable. It's possible that I held so tightly and proclaimed so loudly this vast love because I felt so desperate for the truth of it. Me? Loved? Are YOU sure? Are YOU aware of what lives in here? She is so ashamed of the truth of her...and YOU love this?

It has been 18 years since I walked out of the oppression of a severely limited faith. And it feels like I am rounding the last curve of full circle. Not back into conservatism, but back into a depth of love and connectedness to what is.

Let's pause there for now.

Cleaning my lenses.

Taking in the view.