Only Where Love and Need Are One...

“Only where love and need are one and the work is play for mortal stakes. Is the deed ever really done for Heaven and the future’s sakes.” Robert Frost wrote that and I have been thinking lately about what it means practically. My grandfather, whom I love dearly, is 98 years old, sharp as a tack, so I am very aware of mortality these days.

Need drives many of my actions and probably yours too – need to pay the bills, work at a job(s) or business(es), spend time with family and much more. I notice that love gets left out when I am focused on need but, in the world perception, need is a more legitimate reason for most actions. Why is that? How did they become separated? You see, I think what the Robert Frost quote means is that love and need are two sides of a whole and so are work and play. But we don’t live like that is true, do we? I see this quote as a path to wholeness and balance. I invite you to focus on love in your work and play and I suspect need will come along for the ride. Let’s experiment. It might be FUN!

Joyful Meditation

Every morning when I wake up, I meditate. What I practice daily since I learned it in 2000 is a combination of prayer and meditation. I would consider myself more spiritual than religious although I have friends in many countries, practicing many religions. I can learn something from anyone who follows a path of light. There is no one right way, in my opinion. This road just suits me and as spiritual healing for others became part of it, more and more. I came to it partly because my father was dying of cancer and I longed for a non-medical way to ease his pain. THAT didn't work because he was never open to it but I was hooked from the start.

Some mornings, I've been so worried in the night that my jaw aches from grinding my teeth, bruxism, they call it. In my meditation, love flows down to me and through me from Mother Father Creator God until I am completely filled to overflowing. In the enormity of love, there is no room to be afraid. I am lightheaded and lighthearted with relief. I begin thinking about others, instead of just myself, my husband, family, friends, colleagues and community. I remember solutions to problems that I had forgotten.

Focused outside my own problems and concerns, I glow with the light of being even more fully who I am. I have a vision of what can be beyond what is in this moment. I yearn and move to the reality I am dreaming and begin to realize it. I am buffered by my meditation so events of the day, angry words, ugly sights or sounds, unhappy feelings, have to get through all that love to get to me. And if I forgive happenings, people or events as they occur, they don't stick to me and repeat over and over until I release them. Love and forgiveness are the cornerstone techniques that have changed my life these last eight years. I am grateful. What a gift!