Make Room for the Bloom

It’s fair to say that anyone (and that anyone happens to be me) that creates a grass roots campaign called “Hello Love” must have a fair degree of innocent optimism or a refusal to look at the tough stuff. It’s fair to say that such using such a phrase — “hello love” — may be inviting trouble, horribly ignorant or imbued with PollyAnna. It’s fair to say these things. But it’s a little too easy. It’s a little too easy to dismiss.

Call me innocent. Call me naive. Call me foolish. But let me talk to you about something that cannot be named that threads its way through all living things, that unceasingly pours into and onto our planet benevolently, beneficently. Let me talk to you about something that instantaneously melts obstruction, that imbues a glance with the power to unfold something that is folded in on itself. Let me tell you about tears that flow because this palpable SOMETHING has found itself pulsing in a body opening all the doors and windows that have been closed for far too long. Let me tell you about a force that protects, enlivens, encourages, emboldens– for which there is no match. Let me touch you with this SUCHNESS, this balm that softens every rigid place, that makes room for the bloom, that calms the savageness that can reign within us.

Let me whisper that all our self hatred, all our hard edges, all our disgust is no match for this upstoppable radiance blasting through the darkest corners. Open a cellar door  when the sun is shining and see the darkest dark revealed. Sweep out the corners in the light of day. Marvel that what felt horrifying with all the doors closed now begins to look just a bit shriveled and sad.

Have you read a poem that pierced your heart?
Have you heard music that softened ever hard place inside you?
Has someone ever touched you in a way that healed years of pain?

I want to greet that, grow that, acknowledge that mystery moving in each of us. I want to  consider that we ARE that fundamentally, that we are composed of this essential force.

Look, everyday I struggle with my own form of darkness. Every day I witness that struggle in others. There are those who have suffered horrifying loss, who live in poverty, who have been perhaps irreparably wounded. But this force, this well spring, this ongoing flow is ever present and offers instantaneous healing when acknowledged, shared, exchanged.

Are we too cynical to embrace the purity of this ongoing downpour of grace?

Turn a corner.
Take a breath.
Listen to the subtle.
Choose to lean in.
Stay longer.
Offer more.
Greet what is good.

Every moment.
Every breath.
Every chance you get.