So yesterday I got wound up kind of like a top spinning spinning spinning- spun not by an excited child’s hands, but by shoulds:

I should be…

And I should be….

And then there’s that thing I should be doing

or catching up on

or starting…

If every item on my to-do list were a person, the line would go out my door, down the road, past the two cow barns, all the way to the banks of the Connecticut, over the river (if the bridge vetoed out of existence had actually been built)—— and then some.

In other words, a long list.

about loveMe, a top yanked by strings of thought taking the form of shoulds. In addition to being dizzied by duties of all sizes, I had been visited by an unfriendly virus for several days.

I did not exactly collapse into a chair, but finally, quite late, I did end up in one, too tired to keep pushing. Surrendering, I closed my eyes. Maybe it was sudden gratitude that did it, along with slowing my breathing, but the next thing I knew what rose from within me was: It’s about Love.    It’s just about Love.

The tension in my shoulders softened. I settled more deeply into my chair and my body as I let drop the thought-heavy burdens I had been lugging around.

It’s about Love, not about how much, how fast, how efficient, how this or that compares to so and so. It’s about Love in the doing of a, b, c, d… and love for the one trying to make it to z, who’s feeling discouraged because she’s stuck at e.

It’s about Love for the body and mind doing what they do. Love for the fingers dancing on keys. For the neck holding up the head. For language with which to make myself understood to others and to myself. Love for a safe—-no bombs overhead or war outside the door–home. For the car that takes me to buy groceries and Love for the groceries, replete with fresh vegetables when the ground outside is frozen. It’s about Love for my digestion.

And it’s about Love for the to-do list, long as it is, that rises from my appetite for life and from life’s appetite for this one sitting here whom Love has wrapped in its unfailing, undaunted presence.

Love, at the heart of it all. Ready to rise and wrap any moment in its embrace. Love slowing the dizzy spinning. Love steadying. Love reminding me of my inner love, of who I am: a loved and loving human being engaged in human doing.

Love quiets me.  The spinning now is of a different kind; I spiral in and in and in, and rest.

If I should forget again, if I let my strings get pulled and fall down dizzy, there will be Love—amused and compassionate—reaching from inside my heart to call me home.

Perhaps you would like to share a time that you found your way to the eye of a storm happening in your mind?

G'Mar Chatima Tova

I close with this customary greeting whose literal meaning is: "a good final sealing."  I will add to that:  May you know the love of which you are made.  What better than to know this? 

With gratitude,
Ani

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