hearts

Spirit of Life,
You who body forth
as our starry universe
and this luminous,
blue-green planet:

Now is our hot blue and gold time,
when the air smells of oaks
and pines and dry grasses,
crickets sing all night,
and the rivers get lower and warmer.

Grapes swell with the liquid sunshine
that delights our tongues
sunflowers and zinnias bloom
in glorious colors
and zucchini plants run riot in the gardens.

Help us ground ourselves
in all this beauty
so we can open our hearts.

Help us open our hearts so wide
and so deep
that they can fill with
an entire ocean of love.
Help us feel the joy of that love.

Help us open our hearts so deep
and so wide
that they can hold all the pain
of this suffering world,
and soothe it with our love.

Help us open our hearts to one another.
Move through us as compassion
for all those who fear
and all those who mourn.
Move through us as celebration for all
who are experiencing great joy.

And help us know who we really are:
each a beloved, essential being,
all part of one great
living breathing changing shining whole
whose nature is love.

Help us open our hearts to love.

Blessed be.

My mother came back from a walk last week with a beautiful photo of a heart shape she had seen in the creek. She had tears in her eyes and her voice was wobbly with pain. “This is how I feel right now,” she said. “My heart is underwater. There is just too much.”

So many of us feel this way. Our hearts are underwater. There is too much happening, too fast, for us to be able to process it all. We feel like we are drowning. Our hearts are underwater.

May we know that our pain is the expression of our love. It is the expression of our interconnectedness with all that is. Our pain and grief and rage are the natural outpourings of huge hearts, full of love.

A teacher once reminded me that the heart is a very strong muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. So let us weep when we must. Let us weep and rail and pound our pillows, and let the salty tears wash us clean. And then let us pick up our strong and beautiful hearts and take them out into the world to keep loving.

Photo by Nancy Kubik

Tag: hearts

Open Our Hearts

Hearts Underwater