High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Compassion’

You wrote yourself indelibly on our lives, oh quickly fading year.  You tried us, and tested us, and made us stronger.  Against the backdrop of your seasons, we loved and laughed, said our hellos and goodbyes, poured new learning into our hearts and minds, gathered fresh bundles of wisdom and grew our souls.

And although there were times of darkness and heartache, although we mourned and were afraid, in the end, we found ourselves braver and truer somehow, more determined, surer of ourselves and of our meaning.  Even in the darkness, you wrote poems on our hearts and filled them new understanding and compassion.

You brought us gifts of beauty and unfolded pathways of hope.  Your hours opened to us new wonders and discoveries that thrilled our minds and let us see the depths of our potential.   You brought us moments of triumph that let our spirits soar.

Now, as you take our yesterdays to the temple of times past, take with you, too, this deep red rose as a token of our heartfelt thanks for all the gifts you gave, for all the love you taught us, for all the joy.

Farewell, 2011.  Farewell.

Sometimes, when rain falls this time of year, I think it has come in empathy for all the broken hearts, to grieve with them, to comfort them in their sorrow.  Loss is especially difficult to bear when the rest of the world is wrapped in tinsel and bright song.

And so sometimes, the rain comes, pulling its soft clouds over the dazzling sky, to sing its quiet melodies of compassion. “I am with you; I understand,” it sings.  “You are not alone.”

Sometimes it will rain all day and into the night, so great is the need for its healing.

And when it goes, it leaves behind lustrous tokens of its visit, a final message of healing and hope, small pearls of joy, reflecting the morning’s promise.  The light shall return.  Always, the light shall return.

We speak of comfort in terms of pleasure: hot dinners, warm socks, cold water, clean sheets.   And so it is.

We speak of it a soothing balm in our hours of grief, anxiety and pain.  And it is this, too.

It is all that brings release and relief, that restores our peace, that mends our separation and returns our joy.  It travels in silence like the dawn.  Like the dawn, it is a vehicle of light.

Comfort is love’s great verb, the motion of its compassion, sent to bring us peace, to remind us that always and everywhere, we are dear and we are known.

Outward from the loving heart the smooth rhythm flows, in waves whose gentleness masks their power.  Outward they flow, through every cell, soothing them, enlivening them, restoring in them their essential gladness.

Outward they flow, soaring beyond surfaces, reverberating through space, their song penetrating everything it touches, bidding all to dance to its harmonies.  This one feels its compassion; this one is stirred with appreciation for its joy.  And all are calmed, lifted, opened, refreshed.

Such is love’s dynamism, such is its healing, such is its power.   Bathe in its beauty, sing to its song, connect to its rhythm and dance.   Let it fill you to overflowing, and then pass it on, pass it on.

From the heart of the Great Yes, filled with its unspeakable love, light flows endlessly.  It forms the worlds and all things in them.

The atoms dance in its waves.  The cosmos sails on its splendor.

Invisible, it shows itself through all that it illumines: A summer flower, a smile, eyes that brim with its compassion and joy.  Their radiance is its signature and fulfillment.

And all that is true, and good, and beautiful reflect its perfection and grace.

Ever since I was a young child, on the 22nd of May I have picked a bouquet of wildflowers in honor of my mother’s birthday.

She’s been gone for a couple decades now, although her loving spirit is as tangible for me as ever.

The month of May was “our” month, holding both my birthday at its beginning and hers at its end, and Mother’s Day in the middle.  Not only that, but May was her middle name.

She was a woman of great compassion and bravery, a teacher of nurses, a healer of wounds.  She had a great sense of fun, a wonderful imagination, a beautiful laugh.

She loved birds and flowers and knew the names of hundreds of them.  She loved classical music, big bands, and the songs of Jerome Kern and Rogers and Hammerstein.

She read me poetry and fairy tales and took me to concerts and circuses.

We built sand castles together and combed the shores of the Great Lakes for beautiful rocks.  We camped out and traveled to the wilderness and to the ocean and to great cities.

She gave me the best of everything she knew, and I adored her.

And so, on May 22nd every year, I pick a little bouquet of wildflowers in honor of her birthday and let them carry me back through the years I was privileged to share with her and to bask in our love.

At the end of the day when the rush and tumble stills and your thoughts unwind the hours, let them drift to the places where kindness spilled its light, where laughter broke through.  Let them dwell on the moments when you connected with someone, heart to heart.

Watch from way up high.  See how touching your ordinary moments were, how satisfying your accomplishments, even of small things.  Notice how skillfully you performed all those little acts you take so easily for granted.  And rest a bit in the happiness of it all.

Dip into the pleasures and delights and savor their sweetness and spice all over again—the melodies, the rhythms, the motion, the colors, the fragrances and textures and tastes.  Appreciate the richness and variety you encountered, even when you weren’t really paying attention.  See how the memory remains even so.

Let the glow of forgiveness and compassion bathe you, enveloping you in its freeing warmth.  Let it wash over all the acts you would undo, and those committed by others that piqued your irritation or ire, and let them dissolve in its waters and be healed.

Then rest, with a heart glad and free, and dream sweet dreams.  Dream sweet dreams.

Beyond the rush and drama of the day, and beneath it, breathing itself into the cells of trees, and singing frogs, and sleeping birds, serenity stretches its lush, gossamer sigh.
It’s full of luxury and ease, like a deep mountain pool.

Our buzzings hover above it like hungry mosquitoes. But it is not disturbed.  It wraps them in a cloud of compassion and offers us the nectar of its peace.  Humans, it knows, will do what humans do.

Even so, it seeps into our sleep at night, offering reassurances, painting our deepest dreams with its panoramic view.

Sometimes, when you wake at night, you can even hear its gentle crooning.  “Be at peace, my child,” it whispers.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

The river is full and swiftly flowing.

All week, rain and melting snows have raced down the slopes of the hills in ever-widening rivulets, carrying the winter’s debris, filling the waters, creating complex currents, raising it beyond its accustomed level. It spills over the places where the banks are worn and low.

I understand.  Our world has shifted, and its tilt floods our hearts.  So much has washed away.

Yet, it is spring, and the songs of robins fill the evening air.

All things move in cycles – seasons, nations, planets, lives – to rhythms that are beyond our knowing or control.  Our part is but to witness them, in wonder, and to give ourselves, in trust, to the dance.  We know, after all, far too little to judge.  The most we can do is to learn.

Wisdom comes in increments.  It is born of compassion and nurtured by love.  And even when it seems stern, love is beneath and within it all and is the Yes that spins the cycles, whispering to the deepest parts of us that we are firmly within its embrace.

And though the world has shifted and its tilt floods our hearts, the sun pours its golden light upon our evening waters.  The world births another spring and robins sing their song: be at peace, dear children; you are loved.

As if to cushion the terrible news coming from Japan, winter played her encore.  I’d been following the reports since the quake and tsunami first struck, sleeping only when I could stay awake no longer, trying to grasp the immensity of it, praying that my friend there and his family were unharmed.

I woke with a heavy heart.  But the scene outside my morning window so astonished me with its beauty, that it instantly lifted me past my pain.  It didn’t erase my concern, but it expanded my vision.  It enveloped me in a kind of grace that let remember that our planetary experience includes heart-stopping wonder as well as heart-wrenching pain, and that both are worthy of my reverence.

I cooked breakfast, appreciating the warmth from my wood stove, the sizzle of eggs as I broke them in the pan.  Then, sipping my freshly brewed coffee, I returned to my computer and found a message that Charlie and his family were safe, on the part of the island most distant from the catastrophic quake.  I called in to work to let them know I couldn’t make it in.

The news from the other side of the planet, of course, only worsened throughout the day.  But for an hour, I put it all aside and walked with my camera in the transcendent beauty outside my door.  The snow glistened, even though the sky was thick with clouds, etching every branch, every twig.  It fell in fat plops from the trees and blew in powdery sheets when a breeze danced past.

“How unpredictable life is,” I thought, as I processed my photos.   I expected to be at work on another routine Friday, and instead I was snowbound and watching whole cities disappear before my eyes in a thousand-year event.  I expected to be seeing daffodil buds on the verge of blooming, and instead I’d been wading through drifts of shimmering snow.

None of us knows when we wake to a new day what its moments will hold.  But wonder and compassion will always see you through and, when the days are done, leave you knowing that you were a part of life’s ineffable, perfect Yes.