In this Valentine’s week, I continue to focus on the two priorities – dare I say “resolutions!” – that I spoke about in a blog video at the beginning of the year: 1) Slow down to the speed of presence, and 2) Be love. Holding those resolutions as my ongoing top priorities has helped me remember that we can indeed choose our attitude and approach to whatever is happening.
I’ve been practicing meeting each day from Love. Not so much the hearts and cupids Valentine’s Day love, but rather the full-on Love – the powerhouse Love that is the creative and sustaining force of all and that is the core of our being.
My practice has been further inspired recently by words of the Irish poet John O’Donohue:
May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift. Let’s first talk about that word “sacred.” It’s a word I often avoid because it means different things to different people.
However, years ago I heard Huston Smith speak at Chautauqua. He was perhaps the greatest 20th-century scholar on world religions, and he defined sacred as “anything that evokes the sacred in you.” In other words, anything that touches the profound nature of your being – the part of you that you recognize as being at one with all that is. I like that definition a lot because instead of tying the word to a particular belief system, it becomes about personal experience.
You know that you have touched the sacred within you when suddenly you become quiet, when tears spontaneously come to your eyes, or when there are no words. It’s that moment when something is happening inside of you that you may not be able to describe. It just is. You’re touching something deep within the heart of your being. Or, in John O’Donohue’s words, your heart of wonder.
For me, these words bring a powerful invitation.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.
What could be possible if I met the events, circumstances, and people in my life each day from my heart of wonder?
I’ve been playing with this invitation each morning during those first moments of waking consciousness. As I transition from the dream world back into this three-dimensional reality, I’ve been consciously choosing to invite the new day to weave itself around my heart of wonder. I’ve been choosing Love as my point of entry to the day.
This has helped me live into my New Year resolutions even more fully – to live at the speed of presence and to be love. I’m discovering that the more I stay focused on those priorities, the more easily the day becomes a series of sacred gifts woven around my heart of wonder. I increasingly experience life as a series of synchronicities and connections. And at the end of the day, I am often in awe of all that has unfolded. Making a conscious choice about how I meet the day is making a difference. It is spilling over into awareness of how I choose to meet each new moment – each new encounter.
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of the artist-philosopher Brian Andreas. His word drawing, “Real Hero,” comes to mind:
Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me,
but try waking up every morning
& loving the world all over again.
That’s what takes a real hero.
When I consider the true heroes of my life, I realize that part of what made them heroes to me was their ability to be fully present and to be love, no matter what was happening. While they might never have used these words, they moved at the speed of presence, and they were the personification of love. They had no interest in slaying dragons. Instead, they had huge interest in being love – in living love – and finding the gift in whatever was happening.
At this Valentine season,
May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around your heart of wonder.
~ ~ ~
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