Love & Grace and Forgiveness

My obsession with love and grace continues.  As I remarked on facebook the other day to those who are wondering if I've completely weirded out - "there simply can't be too much love in the world! So I'm sharing it. :)"

On the vulnerability of loving...

When you care about someone, when you dare to love a person (and I'm talking the love of friendship here, not just 'significant other'), there is a cost involved.  You cannot love without making yourself vulnerable.  For in loving, you have opened your heart to a person.  Which means you have trusted them.  You have removed your protections.  For you can only love from a place of giving, of vulnerability.  Otherwise I would challenge if it is really love.  So the person you love has easy access to the soft, fleshy parts of your heart.  And we are all human, with our own foibles, our own mountains to climb, our own challenges, our own failings, strengths, weaknesses, blindspots.  So inevitably, the one you love will hurt you.  Most often it will not be intentional, and the ability to forgive, to show them grace, will be called upon.  It is well worth having people in your life who you love and who you have honoured by trusting them enough to allow them to hurt you.  Embrace that. And be ready and willing to forgive when the place they are in results in your own pain.  Because as they can hurt you, so too can you hurt them.  Grace.  It is a wonderful thing.  Somehow I don't think you can truly love without grace.  That perhaps is a thought for another post.

That's it, I'm over wheat

I've recently started eating wheat again, after not really having it at all since we got back from Europe in June, and even before that, I'd cut it out from about March.  And then of course I did almost a month 90% (ish) raw towards the end of October and through much of November.  Then things got really busy at work, I moved offices, and the nearest, most convenient source of lunch food was a bakery.  And I decided that to minimise stress, I was just going to relax my eating, especially with Christmas coming up, and with working really long hours.  I knew within a week I was not happy with the effect it had on my body (and had my first migraine in months!), but decided I was ok with the trade off as I was really valuing the convenience. Getting home after a 10 hour working day I also wanted the option to get things like noodles, and various other take-aways to avoid having to go shopping and then cook and then do dishes, before pouring myself into bed only to do it all again the next day.

However, I really do not like what it has done to my body, to my digestion, and I think to my emotions.  I have been reasonably emotional over the last few months anyway, because it's where I'm at in my life journey and I've been experiencing a lot of healing around certain things, but the last week or so I have just been an emotional mess. Not just emotional, which is ok, but an irrational, emotional, anxious mess.  Actual physical anxiety like I haven't had in months, and my thoughts have just been, eugh, unbearable.  This is NOT normal and it's bloody awful frankly.  So I'm cutting the wheat out again.  I haven't really introduced sugar back into my life (thank goodness), so that will stay out (with the exception of the occasional dessert during the silly season), and while I had started having coffee again, tentatively, I did notice that I was starting to get physical anxiety symptoms again, so moved to decaf, and then moved right off it again.  I still miss the ritual, but I prefer having a more stable emotional balance.

So, while I know this is a crazy time of year to add restrictions back into my eating regime, I value the physical and mental health benefits that came from cleaning up my eating sufficiently to make the effort again. No more wheat, or at least very limited, I'll mostly keep the sugar out, and the coffee ritual needs to go. I'm not going to restrict things as much as I did when I went mostly raw (ie I'm still eating meat, cheese, complex carbs), but yeah, wheat, sugar, coffee - see ya later!

EXCITED!

Oh my goodness, I'm so freaking excited I'm fair bouncing!!! I think I need to leave work really quickly because I'm beginning to scare people! 

I am soooo glad I finally decided I'd regret not going to the Foo Fighters concert tonight (with the incredible bonus of Tenacious D!)  Bounce bounce bounce! 

(There's no one to bounce to, so I'm blogging it, deal with it blogosphere).

Ok, way too early, but I'm going to leave anyway.  Yay yay yay! Wheeeeeee!  (Grief, I'm like a kid in snow for the first time).

Waxing lyrical on love again

I'm in one of those "I really want to write" moods.  But all the things I want to write about are perhaps not for public consumption.  Private musings on the journey of life, of love, of God, of growth.

There was a lovely quote an acquaintance posted on her Facebook page the other day - "It's going to hurt anyway. So if you're going to love, give it everything.".  That, dear friends, is a motto to live by. And, I think sometimes we read or think about love and we confine thoughts of love to 'significant' others in our lives.  Our partners, our parents, our children, our siblings, our most cherished friends, our source of being.  But love is bigger than that, if you'll but allow it to be.  Love can (and by definition ought to!) extend to the random stranger on the street who looks so troubled, until they receive your heartfelt smile or greeting and they light up (surely you've been on the receiving end of this too? I certainly have), or to the workmate who is having an appalling day and you gift them with a genuine comment of concern, care, or an action of practical support.  Or to the person you observe struggling at the supermarket and you abandon your own fear of standing out to offer them help, or a comment of sympathy. Or the acquaintance (or again colleague) who you can see is having a rough time and you find the courage to be vulnerable and actively offer them your ear, or your support, or at the very least, your understanding.  And can I say, it is sometimes scarey to reach out to someone you wouldn't normally reach out to, it can raise all your own insecurities, your vulnerability, but really, is that not the mandate of love? To be bigger than your insecurities, to be bolder than your fears, to be open to receive love and in turn to be willing to give it.  And the more you offer it, the more you find you have in your own life - to draw on yourself, and also to give out to others.  

And YES - loving really does hurt!  Empathy is not a passive point of view, it is an active identifying with people and allowing your heart to feel what they feel.  That is NOT a comfortable thing!  But is your ultimate goal to be comfortable?  It certainly isn't mine.  Yes, I want to live with peace of mind, but I also value growth and I'm here for the journey, to truly experience life.  To experience love.  As a receiver, but also abundantly as a giver.   It's a poignant ache, but what a way to know you are alive.  Of course, love is not just painful, it is beautiful, but I do think an emotion as strong as love is always a mix of pleasure and pain - of ache and of joy, of vulnerability and of elation.  Embrace it.  Dare to feel.  Risk love.

Dare to live large

Thinking
How do artists find the courage to share their art?  Poets, song-writers, sculptors, painters, musicians, dancers. For surely in expressing your art, you lay bare a part of your soul.  I think perhaps, the desire to share what is in your heart must eventually outweigh the risk and associated fear of making yourself vulnerable, by so openly sharing a glimpse of your sacred-self.  But still, courage must be needed.  Personally, I need my heart to be handled gently.  But of course, when you share your art, your audience is never entirely of our own choosing, and not necessarily gentle, safe or kind.  Hmm.  And yet, sometimes, you just have to share, or risk stifling the beauty of who you are.

Concluding
May more of us have the courage to be and share ourselves, to be open, to have faith, to trust. And to love and express that love.

Delight in the sunshine, in the rain.  In the gentle sound of leaves in the wind, in the fury of the sea in storm. In the quiet of the moonrise, in the majesty of the mountains.   In the sound of laughter, in the pain of grief that reminds you that you are alive.  In the love of friends, in the laughter of children.  Embrace each moment, and live your life as large as you dare.  And may you dare!

Be free, give, love

A little excerpt from an admonishment I wrote myself a month ago:

Embrace. Enjoy. Delight. Trust. And give.
In giving, your joy is reflected back at you.
And in so doing, it touches and blesses others, and thus
goes on. Be free to give and love.

Unexpected post for Ross

I am really missing writing.  I read back through a few of my older entries today and just yearned to sit back and write.  And I have just deleted a completely unfocused, uninteresting ramble in an effort to not lose my 3 remaining followers!

I'm taking enormous pleasure in my journey of late.  I took some time out to breathe last year and just consider the path I was on and check I was heading to a place I actually wanted to get to.  And right now, I am confident that I am firmly and safely in exactly the place I am meant to be.  Travelling lightly, with my heart and mind open to what may come my way and a willingness to experience and grow through whatever landscapes my path may lead me.  I have been blessed by beautiful friends, new and old, and I continue to draw on the things that brief but beloved friends have taught me in the past.

A couple of weeks ago I honoured my brother's 50th birthday, spending a couple of hours chatting and crying and philosophising  with him at the family plot in Waikumete.  I had a wonderful wonderful time and I am so pleased I went.  He is still so present in my life, even if only by how poignantly and painfully I miss him.  I'm not so sure that time heals, I think perhaps the passing of time means there are bigger gaps between the moments of intensely feeling the lack of a person in your life.  It surprises me how much I still miss Ross.  And yet it pleases me too, because as long as I miss him quite so poignantly, he remains a part of my life.  And that was my greatest fear when he left, that I would forget the sound of his laugh, the timbre of his voice, the cheekiness of his play.  But these things remain I am pleased to say.  As too is the memory, and the reality of how beautifully he believed in me.  Not by words, but by active believing.  By taking me places others would have cautioned me going to, by doing things with me others would have questioned my ability to do.  Never did he ask if I was sure, or if I was ok or if I needed help.  He just walked beside me, matching my pace, never making me feel bad for being slow, never making me doubt by admonishing me to be careful, just staying with me, loving me as I am sure only a brother can.  I am so grateful.

Funny, I'd kind of been wanting to write a bit of a 50th birthday tribute for Ross, but that is not what I just sat down to write.  Yet there it is.  Happy Birthday beautiful brother.