The photo attached today is near my childhood home. I took this picture on my final visit with my mom before she moved to assisted living. As it turned out, this was also my final visit before this home of my youth was sold to a new family, a young couple who would make new memories for their family yet to be.
At the end of an early morning walk, I strolled along the creek in complete amazement of its diminutive width and depth. As a child, the creek served as one of my boundaries of permitted travel. The first boundary was the perimeter of our yard. I was restricted to the confines of the yard so that Mom and Dad would know my where abouts. As the years passed, the boundaries expanded to the creek. Of course, to my youthful mind, the boundary was merely a suggestion and I often took the risk and jumped the creek to travel to my desired destination. Usually my destination was a friend’s house not far away. In reality, my destination was just the other side of the creek! Yet, my rebellion of the boundary each time I crossed the creek was noted and chalked up as a victory over the establishment for me.
It was incredulous to see how shallow and narrow the creek really was. Could it have changed that dramatically over the years? Were my young eyes deceived all those decades earlier? Perhaps my adventurous mind created what it needed at the moment. Either way, on that day, I saw the creek in a whole new light. Everything looked so very different from the days of my youth.
Today we may face many challenges. Perhaps we endure struggles that cause us to feel confined by boundaries. Perhaps the boundaries are placed upon us. Perhaps the boundaries are of our own making. We look at our life from the trajectory of future.
When we consider our place in the greater picture of the planet, there is often a shift. When we look at life with a broader lens what do we see? Just as the creek near my home in my youth looked a certain way eons ago and much differently in recent years. I am compelled to wonder what might life look like in hindsight as I consider the issues of our world today.
Is it possible we are exactly where we need to be as a people and as a country so that we make choices with our eyes wide opened? Throughout my years with you, I have said “we are where we need to be. If we needed to be somewhere else, we would be there”. We have spoken many times about the consciousness of the collective and how each of us contributes to that consciousness. Regardless of our individual perspectives, here we are. We are here together and we shall move forward together even with differing opinions and perspectives. As decisions are made, elections decided, we remain part of the whole.
So many questions rise for me. How shall these challenges bring about good? Where do I now see good? How do I contribute? What am I willing to let go of, even if reluctantly, to allow the highest good to emerge? How will I look back on these days, this year and see all that has happened? What will this seemingly daunting time reveal? How will we emerge as a people, a country? When we take a long look back upon this time in history, what will we see?
Of course, I have no answers to these questions. I do know what is mine to do. Perhaps it is what you are called to do also. I hold the high watch for the highest and best for our country. While at many times it is a difficult to release what I think our best looks like, only in being open to what emerges,
am I able to be congruent with the thought of highest and best for all. As I hold the high watch for what is best for all, I call myself to the highest discernment that I am capable of and I allow my actions to follow.
Inspired by I Corinthians 16:14 “let all you do be done in love”, long ago I set the life intention to speak and act from a place of love. If I don’t feel love in my heart, I remain silent and be still. I speak when Spirit calls me to speak according to my intention. I act when Spirit calls me to act according to my intention.
The truth is you and I have no idea how things will all turn out. When worry befalls me I am drawn to Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plan I have for you” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”. I do believe that when justices are chosen, elections have been decided, pandemics resolved, and the world continues on. You and I will be here with one another. My prayer for all is that we will be here as love.
I pray we will be love regardless of the shade of the skin, the nation of birth, the faith that is practiced, the person one another loves, or how and if one names a gender. I pray that we look upon one another as the exquisite creations of the Divine, as beautiful souls worthy and deserving of love.
I pray the rest will take care of itself if we can look in the eyes of all beings with love in our hearts and embrace one another. It may sound simplistic, yet it is anything but simple. When I call myself to love above all else, I then step into a space of learning what I need to know to love and to unlearn all that impedes my human ability to love. It is a journey that indeed we walk together. Will you walk with me?