Today I noticed the way love shapes and forms like an artist who is not limited by circumstances or seeming hindrances.

Love creates in every time, place, environment, and way—it more than creates—love gives! 

As if this was not enough of an astronomically vast gift that we get to co-exist beside and within, there’s more. Love wastes nothing.

I have often chosen limitation and a sense and belief of lack in my circumstances, and not just the difficult ones but the sleepy ones too—those moments that didn’t seem obvious to me of the opportunity before me.

One of my favorite poets, Rumi, is known for penning, “Light the incense! You have to burn to be fragrant.” These are compelling words to me, a picture for an otherwise often, in-the-moment, seemingly unpleasant reality. Sometimes we really need pictures. They help. I need help.

In this case, the idea of motion, of taking action, in what may otherwise seem un-blissful is lifted into the realm of allurement and attractiveness—both of sight and scent.

“Light the incense! You have to burn to be fragrant.” -Rumi

I ponder it today most especially in how this can urge us onward when it comes to how we love one another. I wonder how it might could lead us to dance through life, happily, as though a chill folksy song was playing in the background, like it’s our song. What if we swayed our way into actions outside of ourselves and our egos, and even toward ourselves, with intention and kindness and passion? And even better than that…with awareness? What a wonder that would be.

As I write this to you I’ve barely slept the night prior and many needs call my name, and I’m dreaming a bit out loud to you, wondering and seeking the transformation of non-reaction but rather simply the actions of being like love, creative, generative, awake. After writing you all, my next best step: sleep!

Until then, I’m wondering and imagining how a slow dance, that may have its start as a dirge of pain, can become an expression of joy and goodness, delight and gratitude, for and over the smallest bits of life and how transcendent that could be. I’m considering the curvature of smoke that rises from incense and how it invites a picture of excitement over the gorgeous spontaneity available when I let go of another attempt to control outcomes, in my childlike fears.

As I ponder this I remember how easy it is to forget how beautiful the work of love is at two very particular points: 1) when it’s very hard, and 2) when we perceive it as easy.

But, lighting incense, it is almost always lovely.

And, we, when beholding its slow burn and lightly inhaling its fragrance, marinate in the likeness of such a gentle influence, I know this is a force enough to move even the most unaware to flowing, even me. I want to flow. I need to.

Yeah, beauty captivates and fascinates, and thereby leads, without effort, into creativity and giving. This kind of power is the place where hardship and ease blur and both can become a means, of growing and of life-giving.

I remember the time and place I first read the Proverb, “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.” We lived in Kentucky then and I was writing my first book. I had hid away in a tiny coffeeshop courtyard just off the dirt roads of a nearby horse-pasture town at dawn.

It was the first time it really entered my consciousness how there is not only potential to be refined and made clearer and stronger by the fire of pain in our lives, but that it is equally true to experience necessary refinement by the fire of praise and positive occurrences too… the simplicity was astonishing actually: movement creates life.

Love wastes nothing.

Sometimes we freeze in fears, griefs, questions, exhaustion… (real, human, reasonable things, that must come) and these realities threaten our breath. And yet…

Today I noticed the way love shapes and forms like an artist who is not limited by circumstances or seeming hindrances, and I am so immensely comforted how love wastes nothing at all.

Love makes space for breath and new experiences that we didn’t previously imagine. Love gives.

What does all this matter in our day to day?

There are moments that my mind tells me none of this poetry matters too much when I’m in the mix, busy, and tired and and and… but when my eye slows and catches that ribbon of smoke curling and rising more elegant than I can speak, something beyond my mind stirs inside of me. It is a stirring in my spirit and it instructs my mind to dance in the current of the wind too, to stay in the breath. It speaks to my mind something audacious and good, something like Mother Teresa knew…

“I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.” — Mother Teresa

All of us, by design: pencils, incense, flutes that find their songs in the wind.

Then I recognize, I didn’t just ponder love today, I experienced it. I was touched by it, through pictures and words and a fragrance that’s been burning for millennia before me, and I am roused awake again. And it’s kinda like I can hear a groovy, folksy, song playing in the background and my eyes adjust and figures that previously seemed a little blurry start to come into focus and I realize I didn’t just make that happen nor did I even know how. Rather, in this kind and good place, I remember,

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.” —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

We can make mistakes, tumble, take long naps when we haven’t gotten enough sleep, feel hopelessly unaware (again), and still stay alive and in the Breath. Movement creates life, nothing is wasted, and there is no lack.

Love,

Raynna

P.S. you can dive deeper into noticing love with me by reading my latest book (published a year ago this week!)  The Love Writings, a ragamuffins letters about love

P.P.S. Stayed tuned for changes around these parts in the days ahead by subscribing 

P.P.P.S. You know I’m wondering about you too, right? What do you notice about love lately? Eager to hear.

 

 

 

All pics copyright Raynna Myers 2024