To Begin

I think these times are for opening the heart. It is a prying open, digging deep through the crusty shell of protection and bursting open the consciousness of love, compassion, and unity. It hurts in the beautiful sort of way that only the heart can ache - where feeling more means you feel everything more..the pleasant and the not pleasant. And there is no longer the option of pretending that we, on this planet, are separate. What happens to one, happens to all.

I've been thinking of this a lot - feeling it, experiencing it. And life just keeps giving more of it. So yesterday someone posted a story on Facebook. It was a story that comes through the news now and then - something that I think should never happen but it does - and it has been haunting me, haunting me. A little girl died the other day because of abuse inflicted by her family - of course, it was something she'd experienced much of in her short life. Unfathomable. I can't stop thinking about her. I wish I could go back in time and find her and save her. I wish it so bad.

I posted on my own Facebook status something I have been feeling a lot lately: When I hug my kids, I ask that love touch all the children who need it right now. Love is infinite. And I believe we can send it anywhere, anytime. May we all continue to expand and expand and expand the love so that everyone can feel it - especially those who aren't feeling it from sources that are close.

Honestly, the story of the little girl makes me want to do much more than that, of course. It makes me want to do things that are illegal and insane. I admit it. It makes me want to go door to door and see if people are taking care of their kids (as if I could even judge such a thing) and if not, I want to take the kids home with me and just absorb them into our family and stretch my arms huge and wide and wrap them up in love. That's what I want to do. But for now, sending love (in my thoughts and intentions) is what I can actually do.

After much thought and reflection, I have found that to be a worthwhile start. If we all - collectively - continue to open our hearts and feel each other as family and we continue to expand the love and compassion, then that is a huge step. When we feel each other in this way, we (as a planet) won't be able to keep doing things in the grabby, self-absorbed way we've been doing them. We won't be able to let other people go without the basic resources they need to provide for their families. We won't be able to restrict our love, our service, our money to only "our" kids. There is enough (more than enough) for everyone. But we have to start with the love, with the heart, and with feeling the human condition as One (even when it hurts.)

I think that is what life is doing to us on many levels - making us open our hearts to that kind of love. That is where change will happen. I want more. I want to do more. But that is where I begin. And life will lead us.