Love Unrequited

Last night I dreamed that I was traveling. No surprise there, huh? I was trying to get back home and somehow I ended up on top of a semi-truck. I lowered myself from the top down into the cab where I encountered an amazingly kind driver. He promptly fell in love with me and while I was attracted to him, I kept my boundaries. We politely exchanged phone numbers and then he disappeared. In the dream, my heart continued to long for him. It was his kindness, I think, and the fact that he thought I was really special.

Upon awaking, I thought of this dream and a recent reader request came to mind where I was asked to consider the topic of “unrequited love.” I wondered if this longing was what my reader spoke of. The fairy tales of life. Beauty and the Beast. The story of Ragnelle. Cinderella…this list goes on. The longing for moments when we are truly known and seen through the eyes of another. Often there are no words spoken, it is just a heart “knowing.”

Can love ever be “requited”? What does that even mean? The dictionary defines requite as “making appropriate return for.” Clarity of love, denouement if you will, seems so fleeting. We can all point to times in a movie or story where the hero and heroine look into each others eyes and we see that they are in love, but it usually lasts so briefly. Such is the case with real life, too. I wonder...can we learn to carry those glimpses love with us inside to meet ourselves at our deepest need? Do we need another person in our life to feel that we are being met? While I believe that we are made for relationship, I see also that we often forget there are three principal kinds of relationship: 1) with others, 2) with God and 3) with self.

Relying solely on others only brings heartbreak, because being human brings failure along with it. God can satisfy if we allow ourselves to be open, but some would say even God was lonely and therefore created man. And then man was lonely, so woman was created. Then woman was lonely…A never ending cycle? Is it our curse to always be lonely? That is the paradox for in some regard, I am always alone AND if I believe in God, I am never alone.

Still, my dream showed me the longing. Even as I have strong self-esteem, a great connection with God, friends who love and support me as well as a husband who adores me, there is still the longing. Will love therefore always be “unrequited”? Or can we (must we, perhaps) choose to acknowledge those little moments of love with self, God, others and trust them to be enough? (Realizing that we may always long for more.)

Those moments of trust are strung together like pearls to form a necklace of love around our hearts. Individually they are precious, while hard to see at times. If we allow ourselves to string together the moments, we can see that we have been known. That we are known. Maybe your love is a single pearl ring. Or possibly still even in the oyster. A pearl starts with an irritant (usually a grain of sand) inside the oyster and just like a caterpillar must bump up against the cocoon to form strong wings, so the pearl mills around the irritant while it is being formed. In both cases (the pearl and the butterfly), it is from the struggle that beauty is born. It is my experience that nature does not lie. Is it in the struggle that love is requited?

Maybe I’m still dreaming or living in a fairy tale or out of my mind. Who knows? I would love to know your thoughts on longing and love—be it requited or not ☺ .

photo © geezer dude

stop. breathe. listen.

what has happened?
where did my spaciousness go?
waxing. waning.
full moon gone behind a cloud of busyness.
stop, my child. breathe.*

Early last week felt so spacious, so inviting, so wonderful. I was moving my body and feeling whole and inspired. This week I feel rushed and crushed. It is eight days until Paris and it feels like it is coming too fast. I will have only eight days there. I want these days to slow down. I want to linger here as I desire to do there.

I spent the past weekend (Friday through Sunday) collaboratively creating a couples workshop for Soltura called “The Paradoxical Dance.” The project is energizing and exhausting all at the same time. We will join together again this weekend to fine tune what we have created so far. Thursday I have collage class and then I will ride the ferry across the Sound to visit friends. I will see students on Monday and Tuesday of next week and then very early Friday morning I will leave for Paris.

It feels too fast. I need to catch my breath. I wanted to go to yoga this morning, but sleep seemed more important. I have a to do list a mile long, but writing and processing a bit feels more essential. My visual journal is calling me as well as magazine clippings that say “create me into something.”

Create me into something. Is that my prayer today? I do not want these days to pass so quickly--only filled with busyness. My longing is to be intentional. To stop and listen to God. To see where my path is leading. To follow the rhythms of my soul. It is my own paradox. When I take time for myself, I seem to have abundant time in other places. When I give to others, I receive blessings in return that I cannot count.

Ahh...I cannot put words to it just yet, but it is my Lenten practice. The spaciousness is returning as I slow down, breathe and listen. Amen.

Where do you need to slow down? Breathe? Listen? What are the paradoxes in your life?

* see posts here and here. they helped me start to put into words how i was feeling this morning.

award away!!!

It was really a banner day today as I caught up on visiting some of my favorite sites. At thru my lens lightly, I found that I was the recipient of an award. I decided to choose "I Love you this much!" Thank you, Kate I!!

At Sacred Ruminations, Storyteller bestowed the honor of "E is for Excellent" (and I realized then that Sunrise Sister at Mind Sieve had also mentioned me for this one a few days ago. So sorry for the lapse in acknowledgement...maybe I am not so excellent after all. Oops!!)

And one final mention for the day was found at Small Reflections where my favorite choice was "You make my heart flutter..."

As many of you know if you are regular readers, I often make up my own rules. In this case, I am choosing to give the award of your choice to YOU!!! If you stop by here and read (and especially if you comment), please know that I love your most excellent self and you make my heart flutter when you visit! I hope you will select the award of your choice and post it at your own site with my blessings!!!

I am so grateful for this funny little community!! Special thanks to the award givers!!! Write on!!!

growing pains...mine or hers?

How do you protect someone who is spreading her wings? When is it time for the mother bird to push her baby from the nest? What happens when the baby jumps before the mother is ready? Are they lost to each other forever? Does the mother try to push the baby back into the nest or does she come alongside her young and help them learn to fly?

The natural world is brutal. So is the human world. Can I live with myself if I do not protect her? Can I even protect her? Nothing is in my control especially this bright, spirited young woman. “You have raised an amazing daughter,” she said to me. “You gave birth to a great person.” She is so right, so when will I trust her? When does she stand up and walk on her own two feet? She was so cautious as a baby; waiting until she was sure she could walk. Watching to see that no one knocked her over. Is she still so cautious? She has learned to walk and now she says she is ready to fly. Will I smother her inside the nest to keep her safe? Or will I let her leap, knowing that she may fall? Lord, help me.

snapshots of spaciousness (sans camera)

"If you don’t plow the earth, it’s going to get so hard nothing grows in it. You just plow the earth of yourself. You just get moving. And even don’t ask exactly what’s going to happen. You allow yourself to move around, and then you will see the benefit." --Ms. Fatemeh Keshavarz

This season of Lent has called me deeper into the need of spaciousness and movement for myself. The theme of holy vessel continues to stir inside me and around me. I am always amazed at how God manifests when I allow myself to be still enough and listen closely. The last two days have been glorious mid-winter days filled with blue skies and crisp air. It has been a much needed respite from the long overcast Seattle days. Yesterday I literally felt hypnotically pulled to get outside and walk toward the Olympic mountains that are offered in full view about a mile from my home. I took my i phone and was able to catch a few shots of spring breaking and snow-capped brilliance in my time out. My walk was narrated by a podcast discussing the poet Rumi, so spiritual images accompanied the visual ones around me.

Today was a very different experience. Again, I strongly felt the desire to be outside and moving my body; this vessel I have been called to pay especial attention to this season. This time, however, I sensed that no outside apparatus should accompany me. No phone. No camera. No i-pod. Just me and my good strong walking shoes. While walking, however, I had an image of Kirsten Dunst in the movie, Elizabethtown, in the scene where she fashions her fingers to take a mental snapshot. It felt really important today to “record” snapshots in my mind even though I was certain they would be forgotten by the time I returned home. That, however, was not the case. Here are a few of the images that met me along my morning sojourn:

A tiny sign upon a fence that said, “Please do not feed Riley. Doctor’s orders.” The sun gleaming on the steeple of a church I had never before noticed. White fruit of the looms flattened in the street. Lavender bikini undies at another spot along the way. (Had someone lost their wash or had the world stripped off its clothes to dance naked in the moonlight?) A “no trespassing” sign attached to a church door. Blue sky. Glistening sun. Tiny chickadees playing in bare tree branches. Red, freshly painted doors. Children playing at the park. People happy to be out in the sunshine. God’s presence everywhere.

This morning I was reminded that it is good to listen. It is good to look at the world around me. It is good to be present. It is good to be a vessel. Where are you being called to empty yourself this season? Where are you being called to be filled? How would you describe your vessel?