my heart looks like your heart

my heart looks like your heart

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

step by faithful step


sometimes people walk onto our path and are suddenly and automatically in step with us.
it is synchronous, and neither one misses a beat as we continue to walk in this unspoken rhythm.
other times they stumble and fall onto our path,
or we onto theirs,
and we help each other up,
dust each other off,
and continue on,
with messy hair and tiny pieces of grass or pebbles stuck into our palms,
only this time when there is less room on the path, it feels expansive and clearer.
and although we are now not walking alone, we feel an encouraging and liberating freedom.
and although we are now both sharing what we carry, and carrying for the other, we feel lighter.
we don't always walk side by side … sometimes they are in front of us, sometimes we ourselves lead, 
sometimes playfully with arms outstretched and one foot in front of the other like we are on a balance beam,
other times in silence and trepidation,
and in trust. 
sometimes our path starts to look different than it did before.
the air can feel different too, and things can sound completely unfamiliar.
we might not even recognize where we are, or even where either of us is going. 
we sometimes cannot tell whether it's our path ... or theirs … 
in our awareness we know we are small yet we are big enough to know that it is not solely our journey.
and when darkness settles in and the stillness wraps around us, we see more than we do in the brightest of light,
we feel more than when we search with open hands,
and we know we are in exactly the right place,
at the right time,
every time.


Monday, July 14, 2014

holy love: our sacred bonds

ho·ly

  [hoh-lee] 
adjective, ho·li·er, ho·li·est.

holy:  having a spiritually pure quality: a holy love.

i've been thinking a lot about faith and the automatic confidence we have in our parents when we are young. how we unquestionably take their hand and trust what they tell us.  i suppose this can be good or bad, depending on the situation. but i was thinking particularly about when i was a child, in first grade, and we lived in a small trailer somewhere in georgia. my dad was stationed at an army post nearby and we lived off a dirt road. my mom drove us every day across the state line to take us to a private catholic school in south carolina.  that was the last private catholic school i went to, because our life soon took a different path.  we didn't have much but i didn't know that. what i did have, was security.

not because of religion.
but because of faith.

i remember the day my mom told us that my dad "got orders" and we were moving to europe. i remember crying, and her asking me with a surprised tone, "why are you crying?"

i said, "i'm scared to go on an airplane."

my mom promised me that it would be okay. she said it would feel much like riding on a bus, only smoother. and that at times i might even forget we were moving through the air.

i took her hand and believed without a doubt. both emotionally and physically.  i believed that the plane ride would be okay, and that we would be okay and intact when we arrived overseas, that i wouldn't find myself all alone in a foreign land, not knowing the language, sitting on cobblestone, surrounded by endless streams of busy strangers unaware of my aloneness, myself unable to ask for help and no one knowing i was even lost. 

i put all my 7 years of faith in this one person. 
looking back, i don't know if she was afraid at the time.  it never occurred to me that she might be nervous or anxious about any of it.  i didn't know enough to question or wonder about that. 

i trusted her with my life, my fears, and my rapidly loudly beating little heart.

i think it is sacred, and an honor, when we have moments of faith like that as adults, with people other than our parents. when we can physically and/or emotionally take someone's hand and with all of our being, and our rapidly loudly beating wounded heart, take a true leap of faith, and step where we have never stepped before.

i believe that when we do experience it, our spirit is trusting another spirit,
and it is less like a human bond
and more of a holy bond.



a few years before my first memorable step of faith