This photo, taken in 2015, is symbolic of my life, not uniquely I’m sure. Intense challenges, deep support.
I’m reading the book “Betrayal,” by the Boston Globe investigative team that revealed the harrowing story of pedophile priests within the Catholic Church, the Church’s decades-long coverup of that abuse, and the lives brutalized by it. Napping on my lap is one of our golden retrievers, Dr. Love. I am attempting to embrace and learn from the damage born of ignorance, fear, arrogance and who knows what else that is so much a part of life. And, riding shotgun in this moment is a companion who elicits from me the world’s most powerful word spoken joyfully countless times a day.
This is my best sense of how the universe works, or at least one way it works. We have an intention, a life purpose if you will. The power of that intention draws to us corresponding experiences of both challenge and support which serve its fulfillment. The stronger the intention, the more fulsome are those complementary phenomena of loss, comfort, remorse, serenity, banishment, grace, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s taken a lot of screwball choices on my part to decide that the intention that works best for me is absolute unity with Spirit.
For example:
- Having compassion for those representatives of Jesus who are unmindful of their addictions to lust, privilege and power –– and the devastation those addictions provoke.
- Or, wholeheartedly resisting the soulless insanity of Trump while having sympathy for the man and the self-created heartless reality that imprisons him.
No surprise that what my intention demands of me –– being fanatically positive –– is all but inconceivable. No whining. No victimhood. No blame. No resentment. No self-hatred. Or at least none I hang onto. Continually reframing things in the most life-affirming perspective I can, and being grateful for the challenge.
Thank goodness for reincarnation. The road to my soul’s intention is less daunting as I remember I have all the lifetimes I need to arrive. In those lifetimes is both an extravaganza of forgetfulness and a galaxy of wise teachers holding the ground as I struggle to awaken.
One of them, Padmasambhava, an eighth-century Buddhist master, calls adverse conditions a practitioner’s true wealth. Wealth because from adversity are born those skills and understandings essential for equanimity.
At least that’s been my experience, not uniquely I’m sure.
If I had to pick a metaphor for my life, that photo has possibilities. I am perpetually making room for a story that breaks my heart while on my lap rests Dr. Love.
This is one of your best.
Timely and delicious on so many levels.
That last line……….hoo-eey