Practicing The Way of Love

Champions for Love (PHOTO CREDIT: Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)

Nonviolence is based on the assumption that human nature … unfailingly responds to the advances of love. … An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.  Mohandas Gandhi

Nonviolence is an absolute commitment to the way of love. Martin Luther King Jr.

Many threads and thought bubbles dangle in my awareness this morning as I sit with the muse: endings and beginnings when, in the reality of Universal law, all life is a continuum; how the planet is responding to our oh so human choices; my own oh so human choices; grieving destruction in the woods nearby; the power of language; transforming self and beyond with the practice of love.

Of all these, the transformative power of love and making love a sacred practice in life are the threads I want to weave this day as the 23rd Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence nears completion.

My heart is filled with gratitude for having discovered this annual ‘season’ beginning on January 30th (the anniversary of Gandhi’s death) and ending 64 days later, April 4 (this year, the 53rd anniversary of Dr. King’s death).  Sixty-four days each with a theme to consider and incorporate into creating a culture of peace, of love, of nonviolence.

Seven weeks ago at the outset of the ‘season’ I suggested making life a sacred journey of nonviolence. Today I invite us to make life a sacred journey of love, of peace, of truly transforming ourselves and our culture with the power of love.

Each of the 54 themes bringing us to the final 10 days offers a clue, a path, an idea to weave into daily life. The final 10 themes do the same: responsibility, self-sufficiency, service, citizenship, intervention, witnessing, release, peace, commitment, celebration.  

Of all the daily themes, love and peace are two that come forth as overarching elements. Without love, responsibility can become blame (others) or burden (self). Without love, service, intervention, witnessing can be acts of butting in.  Without love, citizenship can become battle for who is right; release, an act of insincerity; and self-sufficiency, a path to greed and fear of not having enough. Without love, peace is ever elusive.

Love is the power, the transformative energy that both Gandhi and King called forth in their words and their actions. While the idea is simple, using love’s transformative power is not always the easy choice.

As I was reminded while listening to Josh Reeves, Lead Minister at Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado, in a beautiful talk this weekend: love is a practice that requires practice.

In his talk, Love Like That: Love That Reveals, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5sl5HeeSg0&t=70s] Reeves shares his personal mantra for practicing love to transform what life brings your way: 

I experience fear, but I practice love.

I experience anger, but I practice love.

I experience hurt, but I practice love.

Life offers events and experiences that give us opportunities to pivot, to choose differently. As I reflected on experiences that can bring me to thoughts, words, even actions I’d prefer to shift, I added some pivot points of my own:

I experience irritation, but I practice love.

I experience those whose views I loathe, but I practice love.

As I look beyond this Season for Nonviolence, I celebrate these seven weeks and 64 themes of reflection and focus toward creating a world where love is understood and practiced in its purest form. I make a commitment to myself to deepen my understanding and to add new pivot points to peace into my practice.

Mother Earth Speaks. Are We Listening?

Taming the Beast

Spring Snow Cuddles the Grasses

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny – it is the light that guides your way. Heraclitus

That war is an essential part of life is a point of divergence between my views and those of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. His quote however aligns with my belief that we become what we think. We experience where we focus our attention. If we hold the belief that war and violence are necessary in life, our thinking will follow that belief. Then as our actions follow our thoughts, war and violence are the reality we create. The key is that we are at choice as to whether our ‘soul is dyed’ the dark colors of violence or the brightness and light of nonviolence.

Choice was one of the themes this week as I continued to follow the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence and to reflect each day’s theme in terms of my own life and life experience. Each week has deepened my understanding of, appreciation for, and commitment to contributing to the seismic shift that seems needed to have nonviolence be humanity’s default operating system. Remembering that I am always at choice in what I think and how I be is key. I’ve needed to bring that understanding to the fore often this week as I experienced feeling unsettled and even agitated, as if picking up the disruptions of both humanity and the planet.

In the wake of two mass shootings in a short six-day period along with significant earthquake and volcanic activity, I’m grateful to engaged in the Season for Nonviolence during this time when it both Gaia and humankind are erupting. I feel a personal connection to both mass shootings. My daughter-in-love is from the Philippines and my grandchildren carry that lineage. While all violent targeting of others lands heavy in my heart, the events in Atlanta brought them closer to home. The shooting in Boulder, the community where I lived and worked when I first moved to Colorado, likewise felt personal as I sometimes dined in the shopping area where it occurred.

On some level, the simple themes for each day seem inadequate to support a collective shift to nonviolence. Yet no brick is insignificant in building a home and no act of caring is too small to matter. As I’ve so often written, EVERY thing matters. Every thought. Every word. Every deed. EVERY one!

Like choice, each day’s theme in its own way is an important thread (yes, I’m mixing metaphors!) in the fabric of nonviolence: giving, action, equality/equity, advocacy, honor, and ecology. Strengthening one builds others. Giving, whether ‘things’ or oneself in service puts attention on our interrelatedness each as one of the One. Taking heart-centered action no matter how small it may seem ripples far beyond where your eye can see and lives forever in the Universe.

I don’t know about you, but I’m challenged to see and hold some of those with whom I strongly disagree as equal. While my heart desires to cross the vastness that divides us, I hold back unless I know that I have an adversary whose heart is likewise open. How and where might I open more dialog with those whose life experiences and views are so different from my own? How can we advocate nonviolence in the face of those whose ways are violent, honoring the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: When someone stands up to violence a force for change is released. Every action for peace requires someone to exhibit the courage to challenge violence and inspire love.

In his words I notice themes for earlier days in the Season: courage, inspire. A reminder that no thread stands alone in weaving nonviolence into the ecology of our culture and of the planet. Every choice we make creates the environment in which we live. Our daily habits determine much more than we dare imagine. How willing am I to look ever more deeply at my choices?

The beasts we meet are many on the path of nonviolence. May we meet each one with the loving desire to tame whatever deters us from being the nonviolence we wish to see in the world.

Fuzzy Buck Agrees! Nonviolence Please!

Graciousness in the Face of MIMEO

Woke to a Surprise Snow This Morning …

There is hardly a more generous gift we can offer someone than to accept them fully… Elizabeth Gilbert

To which I would add: that includes fully accepting YOU for who you are. But I digress from the exploration of graciousness that I experienced and the insights of this sixth week in the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence.

The theme of graciousness moved me most deeply this week among the many beautiful threads being woven into the fabric of nonviolence during this 64-day period marking the dates between when Gandhi and King were each assassinated.

‘Am I willing to make gracious concessions on things that do not matter while I also stand firm in my convictions about those things which do?’ was the essence of the question posed on day 37, graciousness the theme.  Doing so invites (indeed requires) me to detach from my opinions. Say what!?? ‘But my opinions are my armor, my protection …’ I reacted. Then, taking in a breath I realized ‘… and my opinions maintain the illusion that I am separate from, maybe sometimes even better than, another.’

For me that can take the form of stewing in unspoken words of criticism or popping off a snarky comment for what I perceive is someone else’s mistake, a MIMEO: Mistake In My Eyes Only. And, although whatever I observed may indeed be in error, it is unimportant in the grander landscape of life. When I detach from my opinion, letting go of my need to be right, I open the door to allow graciousness to enter. I embrace that grander reality that we are not separate and, although we are each unique, we are all the same.

This is not in any way to suggest that we look the other way and maintain silence in the face of those values and convictions that we hold dear. Graciousness is not about sweeping under the rug or ignoring injustice, inequality, racism, poverty, dishonestly, etc. It is about speaking to those very things from a grounded, clear place with care.

To me, Meghan and Harry demonstrated graciousness in their interview this week with Oprah – speaking their truth, sharing their experience, and revealing aspects of the Royal Family and the British Monarchy that are generally hidden from view. Such revelations about influencers and institutions are likely to continue and to point us to changes needed to sustain human life on the planet. May we reveal with grace.

A commitment to graciousness invites us to speak and act on what we wish to change in the world from a place of love not fear; dialogue with rather than spewing our views at another; choosing mindful kindness over unconsciousness animosity; and seeking understanding instead of our own sense of righteousness.

This week’s themes or threads – love, kindness, mindfulness, dialogue, understanding and graciousness – add to the strong and beautiful fabric of nonviolence. Each are concepts and ways of being that model how I want to participate in life and how I dream life can be on the planet and we move step by step toward creating a world that works for all. And they point us to the theme for today: unity.

And Had a Beautiful Warm Fire to Break the Chill - Grateful!

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Hazy evening in the Sangres

Peace cannot be achieved by violence, it can only be attained through understanding. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here we are one day beyond the mid-point of the 64 days in the Season for Nonviolence. The muse is curious that I’ve stayed with a theme and carried it forward each week, a different experience in these weekly musings, starting from a not quite blank slate.

The themes this week led me to wonder if there is a point beyond which too much of a good thing becomes an obstacle. And, if so, what is that point?

Take patience, one of this week’s themes, for example. Do I want to be patient with injustice? With inequality? Poverty? Hunger? Degradation of the environment?  Can we take patience too far?  Perhaps patience has a pivot point: being patient with self, with others, and the process while not allowing that patience to become indifference or giving up. That point we must each determine for ourselves. No wonder Pema Chodron’s words ring true: Patience is not learned in safety.

The week’s other themes included generosity, listening, forgiveness, making amends, conflict resolution, and acknowledgment/appreciation.  Is there a point beyond which too much might get in the way of creating a nonviolent culture?

Acknowledgement seems an especially important ingredient for nonviolence given our current political culture and the violence that occurred as a result of the failure of a candidate for president to acknowledge defeat. From my perspective (and I acknowledge that some will disagree), this lack of acknowledgement reinforces the wedge that perpetuates our ‘us vs. them’ political and social culture.

But admitting the reality of something is only one aspect of acknowledgement. Recognition and appreciation are equally important. What if we would recognize the good in another’s point of view or in their way of being? What if we would recognize and appreciate the fear that many have toward others who are different?  What do I need to acknowledge that will contribute to nonviolence? Who/what do I need to recognize and appreciate?

Our capacity to acknowledge and appreciate grows from generosity in our listening, in being willing to forgive and make amends and in our willingness to engage in resolving our differences using nonviolent approaches.

In reflecting daily on these themes, I continue to be reminded that the journey of nonviolence starts within. Perhaps that factor is the root of our challenge to create a culture of nonviolence. We have yet to reach the point where our collective will pivots toward nonviolence and peace. While the journey starts within, it ripples beyond to the village required. How I contribute to that pivot today?

Nonviolence in the Woods Out Back

Discovering Fire Anew

A Home in the Woods

Some day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Stillness. I was called to stillness this week. Quiet. Stillness. Inward. Outward. Expressionless Expression. Thoughtful without thought. Within. Without. Fullness. Emptiness. Rest. Deep Rest. Body rest. Mind rest. Spirit rest. Rest to restore. Rest for reset. Rest for the new. Rest to renew. Stillness. Quiet. Rest.

In quiet stillness, I continued to follow and reflect on the theme each day in the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence. The themes included self-forgiveness, inspiration, mission, prayer, harmony, friendliness, respect. As in the themes leading to this point each resonated to different parts of my being.

Harmony, my personal ‘favorite’ this week, found me exploring acceptance and tolerance and recognizing just how violent unjust criticism of both self and others is.  I saw that each theme is not a goal to reach but a quality, a way of being, to be built from the inside out. Moment to moment. Day to day.

From that insight, inspiration found me wanting to celebrate those moments where I meet what nonviolence asks of me, while self-forgiveness reminded me to be gentle when I fall short.

Somewhere along the way, I saw (in a blinding flash of the obvious) with crystal clarity that LOVE is the essence in all of nonviolence and in the themes offered each day in the Season. Without love, the themes are simply words and any action stemming from them without love is dull, empty, impermanent. On the other hand, with love our words and actions are everlasting, full, and bright. Imagine a world where we each embrace ‘harnessing the energies of love’ as our mission. Imagine yourself and others navigating life with the respect and friendliness that the energy of love commands.

I’m imagining that I’m building my capacity to harness the energy of love and to pour that love into every person, every event I encounter (and, yes, I have a L O N G way to go to meet that high standard of ‘every’). But taking on that as purpose and mission reminds me of the truth that we are all one of the One. We are not separate from Source or from one another. Violence toward another is violence toward self just as love toward another is an expression of self-love.

My prayer for humanity and for our planet is that we ‘let peace be on the earth and let it begin with me’. Give yourself a few moments to allow this beautiful version (click here) to wash over you and to enter your being.

A Snowy Day at the Ziggurat