As I write this, my country, that I deeply love, elected a new President.
And I honestly didn’t know what to write about today.
I teach simple tools for better relationships.
Do I ignore what is happening and give you some inspiration? Or do I use what is happening and extract inspiration from it?
First, I practiced silence, as in, “when in doubt about what to say, stay silent.” Closely followed by remembering to ask, “does what you have to say improve upon silence?”
And then it came to me. The message for this week, and for my life and yours.
When in doubt about what to do, do love.
Yes, love is patient and kind, but love is also fierce, and protective and the absolute foundation of all creation. Love can be both a song and a whisper and the sound of drill building a new structure.
Love can be messy and beautiful at the same time.
I went to church today. I hadn’t gone in a long time. I went to take a friend, but really, she took me.
When in doubt about what to do you for yourself, the fastest path to peace is reach out your hand and do something for someone else. Don’t believe me. Try it.
The brilliant Minister, Elizabeth Longo from Unity on the Bay, said that everything that is happening right now is a call to love.
That stuck with me.
Hate is not a call to more hate. It is a call to love.
When we see what is happening around us, we can stay stuck in the emotion of it – whether its anger, disappointment, grief, or we can acknowledge the feeling and then use that feeling as fuel to take action.
The Minister spoke about Sacred Activism, inviting us all to get involved in the communities we care about, but not from a place of “hating” the other side, and instead to make any act of service sacred.
As I see so many of my friends going through different stages of grief and deeply moving reactions, the idea of bringing sacredness to this moment and whatever we do with it feels like relief.
I can honor my beliefs from a place of love and not from a place of anger.
I can love and respect people I disagree with. In fact, we have all disagreed with people we love and respect at some point in our lives, right? So we actually already know how to do that. We just need to practice.
Moments like these are when we need to pull out all of our spiritual tools and use them. Whether it is disagreeing with love and respect or helping each other heal, or holding space in our hearts for our own healing.
I heard Danielle LaPorte speak on Friday night. She talked about going through messy times – whether in life or as a country. She talked about all the things we do to connect with our soul such as:
Prayer,
Yoga,
Meditation,
Affirmations,
Journaling,
<Insert your favorite way to connect with the Divine here>
And she said, these messy times, these heartbreaking moments, THIS is why we practice all of the ways we feed our soul.
That includes reading this blog, and thank you for being here, writing this now, for you, is helping me heal, so we are having this experience together and I am so grateful you are here having it with me.
All the ways we nourish our hearts are meant to prepare us for when we need to stay centered, remember who we are and take action aligned with our deepest values and not with our most recent reactions.
So how do you “do love” when you are upset?
You pause. Everything starts with a pause, because in the pause, you can remember your intentions, you can check in with your heart, you can connect with what most deeply matters to you and then from that connection, take action.
One of my friends deeply values justice. I deeply value justice. I become like a military boot camp officer on a bad day when I see an injustice. So let me be clear that when I say “connect with your heart” I do not mean do nothing, be Zen, go on a mountain and meditate. Absolutely do that if that is what your heart is calling you to do, but the real deep work of our lives is not in the mountain, it is in the middle of the chaos of everyday life. THAT is where we practice.
In our marriages, with our best friends, with our colleagues at work, at the doctor’s office.
No matter what is going on around us, we can bring love – sometimes fierce and sometimes gently to wherever we are.
And that is what I want to share with you today.
In the midst of whatever is happening to you right now, when in doubt about what to do, do love.
RESOURCES for “Doing Love”
Articles on ModernMarried.com:
Want a happy marriage? Learn to Recognize and Process Your Negative Emotions.
Forgiveness – How to Declutter Your Heart to Create More Space for Love
The Soulful Conversation: How to Communicate with Your Spouse
Do you know someone who could be inspired by this post? Please share it. Thank you.
