The Loveless

I woke up to the rain this morning. It’s been falling in slow and steady sheets through the fields. And I sat on my bed, dimmed daylight sneaking through my window, and strung a few notes out on my mandolin. Small, simple songs for a grey morning. Time has slowed down for me, I’m no longer in this frenzied rush or strain to make things happen or get things done. My life doesn’t consist of finding something to be busy about. And I am starting to realize that the more your life becomes about that sort of thing, the less it becomes about the right sort of thing.
Pause.
Stand still in time and look about you at the turning leaves and the rain puddles scattered through the fields. Sip your coffee in the morning and look at the person across from you until you see them. Look at them until you can find in their eyes the depth and thought and feeling and being of a life lived, pain felt, things experienced, and love learned. And keep looking until you can find residing there the very thing you know resides in yourself. Look until you are mystified by the wonder of it.
And walk the day with that pair of eyes, and with this new heart beating something beautiful, and with your empty-full hands holding out this glowing love to every person you meet.

We are none of us machines that walk the days and nights on this earth. Hard as we try to deceive ourselves into some sort of blind, unfeeling state where cold laws and analysis hold our fascination, it is not who we are. We ache. We have broken hearts, we have feeling hearts, we have eyes that grasp onto beauty, that despise the ugly…..
We have actions and movements formed by others’ actions and movements; we are none of us separate. We are none of us alone.
This life is not defined by a prescribed formula, not by small actions we can fit into a box and mail through the postal service. The reason we want things to look a certain way is so that we can perform our check-mark, achieve our supposed success in living the right way ….and never have to resort to a love that is dangerous and flows through our hearts and situations, a love that asks us to not ignore the stories and lives and plights of others. A love that does not simply acknowledge the suffering of others, but cries out with them, feels part of their pain and agony, and sees part of their world through their eyes. It is a love, that, instead of situation or label or cause, puts a name on a stranger.
We have been quietly converted to the lie of a loveless life where we are slowly strangled by the cords of our many conveniences; stuck in a room where the mass of things, situations, and manipulated circumstances turn from claustrophobic to suffocating.…..all the while hiding from the wonder lingering about us, trailing our paths, clinging to us like the mist on a mountain. Our eyes begin to grow dim in the haze that surrounds us.
So pause.

Someday this will all be ashes blown away. And I have no plans for a futile chase. Sit still for a moment. Let the smile creep and grow from your heart to your mouth to your eyes. And stand there, let go of it all, watch it float away like a thousand bubbles set free on the wind.

Let the story burn into your heart. Let it burn into your eyes until it clouds your view. And look into another pair of eyes; look until you see. Look until it changes you, until the ice thaws. Look until you are no longer a machine. Look until love becomes something more than a function and a prescribed action. Look until you see the blood falling from another pair of hands. Look until you see Jesus.


And walk the day with that pair of eyes, and with this new heart beating something beautiful, and with your empty-full hands holding out this glowing love to every person you meet.