All Things Are Possible …

When we are willing to love

For the past two years I made the pilgrimage to the Sisters, Oregon Folk Festival. It’s a pilgrimage because it offers more than fabulous musicianship. It offers mind-blowing, concept cleansing, knee-dropping spirituality when we open to finding its presence.

One entertainer, Ellis, caught my eye this year. Standing alone on the stage with her guitar, Ellis offers a unique sound, one-of-a-kind songwriting and a heart as big as the festival. There were few who saw her that didn’t fall in love. It was her infectious smile, unregulated laughter and insightful words (words uncommon for one of her young years) that claimed my attention. She had a way of cutting right to the core of the human condition and making us laugh uproariously as she took us into her world.

During a break between songs she gently spoke of searching for a way out, and that what we really search for is a way in. As I listened, I thought back to my original reason for starting down the spiritual path. I thought I was searching for a way out – a way to silence the voices in my mind constantly tending to my short-comings. That, to me, was a pilgrimage worth its weight in gold. Were I to be victorious I knew life would look like heaven on earth, the Promised Land – worth any price I had to pay. In triumph, I would be adequate and worthy.

I didn’t know then that I really searched for a way ‘in’, a way to include more, relate more, to love more … to be fully here, participating, expressing, and connecting with all those I wanted so badly to leave in my dust. Had I known then, what I know now, I couldn’t have entered the path so innocently or been so willing to engage my dragons and demons. Looking back, it may have been a blessing to not know.

Although … knowing what I searched for might have helped me move more quickly and brought the real pot of gold into clearer view. Had I realized that loving more was the Holy Grail, the key to joy and self-love, surely I would have dropped my defenses and unabashedly embraced life. Had I, I would have discovered that anything is possible when we are present and willing to love. All the tightness and knots of life are because we choose ourselves – our ways, beliefs, needs – instead of choosing love, instead of being present this moment’s reality.

Perhaps though, it is our search to find a way out that hones us and breaks us open enough to accept love’s possibility. Had someone told me to just love I would have deemed them crazy. What? Love those who hurt me? I wouldn’t have been able to hear Ellis’s words were it not for countless dances with my now darling demons.

Our search for a way out is a wondrous teacher. It perfects us with each dead-end, until the pilgrim ceases. Along the way it shaped us into the face of acceptance, adoration, compassion, and deep abiding love. A friend dropped me a note the other day. In it she wrote, “… and yet the richness that pours through you now comes from the depths as well as the heights.” Her note captures the essence of the spiritual quest and the possibility that awaits us all. Anything is possible – even finding ourselves absolutely adequate and worthy.

Ellis: The only truth is what we do with right now.

Gayle: Will we choose love?

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