Divinity In The Grass
Remember how I kept finding love in the bottom of my tea cup at work? Last week I found love on the ground. On Christmas Eve AppleJack, The Zombie, and I decided to saddle up the dog and walk a few blocks to the historic square to see the Christmas lights. This is an annual event here--the Griswalding of the courthouse and the block upon which it resides. It is a foursquare light show with life-size holiday dioramas all over the lawn. Families come from all over the county to see it and meet Santa in the gazebo. It is usually frosty cold but somehow it seems more pleasant seeing the line of tykes bundled up in their coats across the courthouse lawn than standing in a stuffy irritable line in a shopping mall.
Santa was long gone by the time we got there; it was Christmas Eve after all, but there were still plenty of revelers running around under the lights. The dog got some pedestrian love. We got a brisk walk in the cold night air. Then as we were rounding one corner of the block I saw this red heart blazing on the ground beneath a miniature grove of red light trees. I instantly thought of my tea cup love and wondered "Does love follow me everywhere I go?"
No. No it doesn't. Love precedes me wherever I go. I'm finding it everywhere because I sent it out before me, remember? It keeps showing up because I launched it from home base over and over and over again. It should come as no surprise that I keep finding it. These are the footprints, fingerprints, and lip prints of the love I have spent a year deploying with words, with whispers, with meditative thoughts, and with Ugly Dolls. Of course I am going to see the evidence of that love wherever I look--I put it there.
It has been said many different ways that what we put out into the world comes back to us. The Bible says it, Buddha said it, even The Beatles said it. We will eventually see the fruits of our intentions in the world around us, both good and bad. If you want to stumble across love in the grass or glimpse love in the bottom of a cup, you can't keep it for yourself. You have to release it. You have to send it out. Yesterday I met a woman obsessed with celebrating love but the only thing keeping her blog and her life from being truly transcendent is the fact that she seems to hoard love all to herself. Like most people, her focus is always on getting (and proving) love. The deeper glory of love is in releasing it. If you send it out you'll find it everywhere--not just in the arms of your lover and the eyes of your children--but everywhere.
As I was in the middle of writing this a FedEx delivery man came to my door. Since his company took such a massive black eye with that viral video last week I'd like to highlight the fact that he was polite and friendly and offered me a genuine smile when I answered the door in my pajamas.
Anyway, the nice fellow handed me a box that began its journey to me last summer. I made an investment in a small company with the idea to put inspirational messages inside the linings of women's shoes. Buyers of the shoes get to choose the messages that go into their new shoes. When they wear the shoes they simultaneously don the message inside and walk within the power of the words they chose. With every step they affirm their own message and therefore influence the interactions of their day while wearing them. I thought it was a brilliant idea--shrine worthy, investment worthy--so I gave the designer some money to get the idea off the ground and helped spread the project around the internet for her. It worked. Inside the box I received this morning was a pair of those shoes--knee high rain boots with a message inside. Even without the telltale heart symbol I saw it coming back to me again; the love I sent out to touch the feet of other women.
Whatever it is you resolve to do in 2012 I hope you realize that there is no act of love too small to change the world or at least change the way you see the world around you. Even a kind thought is an act of love. It matters. It works. Whatever it is you do, know that it's not just a blog or just a job or just basic good manners. It's a ministry.
(c) 2011, ACG
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