Where is Love in My Life?

This Valentine’s Day mornin’ I awoke with a headache and sore throat–the very reason I was still in bed at 9:45 AM, rather than at work. I felt this settled longing in me to talk about LOVE. About Gabriel, the Chilean boy who captured my heart in Coyhaique. About 3 girls whose elementary school uniforms hung over bony shoulders while we fell in Love, at the park, at McDonald’s, at the library, in my car. About a small black kitten who crawled into my little brother John’s arms the morning after my friend Meghan gave me a medallion that read “Harmony”. About the story of Black Liberation in my country, the leaders who have lived and fought, inspiring me to love more fervently every season of life. About the four strange white people with whom I spent the first 20 years of my life; my redeemed ones, my family that will never give up on itself. About my Spirit, the mysterious animating force that keeps saying “no” to what stifles me, regardless of the cost, and leads me toward growth, more every day.

Since I felt that inclination to write about Love, I decided to do it. One Insta photo just wouldn’t be enough, so I decided to write a love letter here, a grocery list of all that I love. These are the parts of life that give me yummy sensations, that tell my heart, “it is well,” despite the anxiety and depression that plagues my days, and haunts my nights.

3 beams of light. 1 soft-hearted little boy. 1 ridiculously happy white girl.

Gabriel Rebolledo Castro is pictured above with that sheepish smile I’m not sure I have ever seen on him before. I fell in Love with him when I heard him speak of, long for, and tell stories of his faithful love for a place called, Coyhaique. I thought I was the only one who loved like that. Nope, he is my match, mi luna, my home, the telegram from Heaven telling me: YOU BELONG HERE. Happy Valentine’s Day, mi amor. I know you are reading this, because you check my blog even when I haven’t posted in months. (TE AMO!)

(From Left) Kiyah, Aaliyah, Demetria….I always say their names in a row as if they could ever be put into one category. The differences between them: personalities, preferences, perspectives, are broad, yet they share this aura, this divine essence, that I inhale every time I smooth back the hair from their foreheads. I am in love with their laughter and their insecurities, their jokes, and the way they perceive the world. Sometimes I get caught up in my hopes for them that I forget to breath them in. May the next 7 years of our lives together be as beautiful as the last 7. I love you with every breathe I breath. On days when I feel inadequate and out of motivation, I think of you three, and stay on my well-trod path of creating a better world.

The kitty named Harmony.

For the first time, this Lydia Nomad has a home. A house I rent, a back yard where I am building a compost pile in hopes of having a successful garden this Spring. I bought furniture (yay used furniture!), hung art pieces, conjured up a nest for myself. In a way, I am settling down for a season, and my tired, tired heart, is ‘CITED ‘BOUT IT. I sleep in the same place every night and IMO, that place needs a cuddle buddy. BOOM. Just as I was considering pet adoption, a flea-infested little black kitty-boy came to the front stoop and I knew he would never leave me. Harmony. I am in Love with the way he curls up by my neck when I am resting. I am in Love with his stubby nose and how his hair feels when I rub it the wrong way. I am in Love with his presence in my life, always prioritizing comfort and connection. Thanks for helping me evolve, baby boy.

Life’s difficulty is its’ richness.

I am in Love anew with reading. Books. Books. Books. I love the way they feel in my hands. I love the rustling of pages and what happens in my mind as I fly through chapter after chapter of adventure and wisdom. I love imagining these authors, melted into a blanket with a warm cup of tea while they write, just like me, while I read their words. I adore sharing ideas. It delights me to make connections between philosophies, regions, people groups. The world in my mind is more alive right now than the world around me, and I hope it stays that way for a long time. I am in Love with the materials I am consuming as a part of my Sage Yoga School training. Crafting a class unique to my experience reminds me continually of the constellation-shape this life really takes, despite the way Western intellect seeks to slice it up, to neatly categorize each decade. Thank you, lovers of literature, who dared to write without knowing if anyone would read. Thank you for saying what my heart did not have words to express. I am enamored with you all.

NyNy, our patron saint of Hope & New Life.

Finally, I love this tiny lady. She is our ray of Hope and Light. When I had nothing to give to my girls, she showed up, and crying, tottering, smiling, laughing, she provided what they needed. She reminds me of how brief & sacred the times we have together are. One day I will tell her about her childhood. I will tell her about what she gave us, about how utterly good she is, about her laughter, and about how she inspired me to live whole-heartedly, though it cost me much suffering. You remind me how very worth-living this life is. NyNy, I am here to tell you of your belovedness.

 

I am here to discover Love.

Amen.

Happy Valentine’s Day, beautiful world. I love you.

Lydia Nomad Bush

 

Ahimsa & My Ego

Heart ablaze again, guide me. You I consult in times of humility. You I live by, you my internal North Star. The Jesus before and after they spoke to me of him. You, preservation of my relationships, hope of my days. 

This week I said the most powerful and dreaded word in the English language. Never expected that from myself, consciously or by accident. As a believer (believer in Spirit, that is, the world inside our world, always conspiring to make itself known to the physical beings), a mistake of this kind leads to deep introspection. In fact, since getting suspended from my job, I have passed days almost entirely alone and in deep reflection. How did I get so out of touch with my heart that a word contrary to who I have worked to become, slipped, like any other word, across my lips? That is Spirit. That is Spirit asking for attention. True sign of my need to pay attention. To get woke anew already.

You see, waking up to the pain of those around us isn’t a one time thing. It is an evolutionary (gradual; see Everything is Spiritual for a deeper explanation of this idea) process. I cannot one day decide that I will abide by the revolutionary ideals of Jesus and stand against the system of domination and expect myself to….abide there from that day forward. That is uncomfortable territory. That is asking the ego to bow. That is tough shit.

Violence happens to humans everyday in the form of unkind or careless words and actions: all the grub and grime of a groaning and restless world. Our fears are the first application process, so to speak, through which that daily violent input must pass. Fear we encounter on the daily  is a disruption which can become either ego fodder or transformation fuel. Author Deborah Adele says that there are two kinds of fear: instinctual fear, for the sake of survival, and fear of the unfamiliar (The Yamas and Niyamas, 2009). Those of us who exist on the more posh side of life (a place to live, some food to eat, very few–if any–daily threats to security, health, and freedom) are prone to over-entertainment of the second kind of fear. (It goes all the way back to the Old Testament IMO, when they scaped those poor goats all the way to the wilderness with everybody’s adultery and disrespect and masturbation tied on its’ back; A live metaphor for the weight of human sin.) When humans have time and/or security, they seem to begin to react to fears (real or unreal, rational or irrational–ego food all the same), and inevitably accumulate guilt. Well….who is around to interrupt this fear and guilt cycle? Who trips us up when we walk in the pride caused by this treacherous consumption of fear? Them. People (especially those at or near the top of the food chain) like to pin guilt on them. The ones without fear. The ones who face fear number one and still have the nerve to stand on street corners asking for money. The ones who do the-thing-I-never-would and dare to continue living instead of melting into the dehumanizing guilt-puddle we expect. It’s yuck, but it’s human. Or, tragically, entire people groups scapegoat other entire people groups because of the truth they tell about history (see: Black Experience in America). Humans do this, and then the ego, if unaddressed by empathy (or equal parts suffering), laps that stuff up like a thirsty puppy, and, like a puppy, it grows. Then, perhaps, it bites.

The same day I am dismissed from work, I reach up to grab a book or two off the Black History Month shelf at Terry library, and for the first time, insecurity chases my hand back into my pocket. Racist, I hear the voice of accusation inside my head. What are you trying to cover up? 

The ego growls and I snarl to myself: the injustice of it! That my innocent action should be inhibited by a single misunderstanding. One accusation.

One accusation, not even voiced outright had me suspended in inaction and egoism.

Violence to fear. Violence reaps fear. If I refuse to scapegoat this insecurity grounded in fear, where does it go?

Transformation fuel. To quote Gary Zukav (The Seat of the Soul.), “…we are held responsible for our every action, thought and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention.” Pay by what you outsource to others, or pay by running your own transformation race. The choice is always ours.

I have found that my ego’s kryptonite is understanding. When I take the time to understand, I overcome violence in myself, and in my interactions with others by the power of peace and by lofty aspirations of Love. Understanding often leads me to tears; this time I can’t help reflect on how hurtful this me-centered attitude must have been over the course of these callous months, culminating in my utterance of that unfit word, to my minority friends, or friends living on the corner of gender and racial discrimination* in this often hateful society. I acted contrary to the magnificent Eastern value of Ahimsa; nonviolence, and thus, contrary to my deepest self. I can do better. We can do better.

One accusation, result of my mistake, shaved ounces off my ego. No wonder the African American community has offered the world countless humble artists, truth-tellers, and thundering prophets. How many accusations do they hear in a day, my brothers and sisters next door, yet so far away from me? Drunk. Lazy. Racist. Dumb. Inadequate. Inferior. The list goes on, for them and for our Native American kindred. May my white ego stop short, as those of my friends are forced to every time they leave their homes.

So much to learn, so much loving left to do.

Gratitude & Hope for Ahimsa,

Lydia Nomad

 

*For more on this idea of Intersectionality visit The Liturgists