Pure Love

Calm:  Not showing or feeling nervousness, anger, or other strong emotions.

I'm grooving on the tension between doing and being.  I find it so hard to be quiet and still and yet find it so deeply satisfying.  I get these days where I don't feel like I get much done but I'm not at all worried about it.  What's the big deal with getting a lot of productive shit done?  Am I changing the world?  Am I changing anything?  While I'm being glib here - the toilet does need to be cleaned every now and then - I'm beginning to understand that it's okay to hang out.  Just sitting is doing something.  I don't have to be moving forward in space to be accomplishing something.  I read a story about an introvert trying to explain to her extrovert husband that when she was quietly looking at the horizon she was doing something.  My brain works best when it has time to fuck around, go here and there, drift, muse, explore, hunt.

I'm in a pretty long run of calmness.  I wrote this down because it's so unusual for me to be calm.  I believe this is a manifestation of a spiritual life.  I don't think a spiritual life should be marked by chaos and energy and motion.  Sit down for a few minutes.

My Cincinnati sponsor of 25 years spent his last few months receiving hospice care for prostrate cancer and he was in a lot of pain at the end.  I was able to talk to him every day as he was dying when he was on strong palliative medication.  He was a retired judge and very specific in his life views but . . . boy . . . he got kind of loopy and goofy and funny at the end, sharing a lot of personal stories that I hadn't heard before.  Men in the U.S. born in the middle of the 20th century weren't famous for sharing their feelings.  But the one comment that has stuck with me over the years was this: "You know, Seaweed - I think that God is just an expression of pure love."  Mind you, this came from a dedicated, life-long, Catholic who went to mass every day.  Every day!  I can't do anything every day, let alone drive to a church somewhere.

Pure love.  Who wouldn't that work for?