Friends and Lovers

Today seems like time to remember that wherever I am, the All is There too, and in that sense I am apart from friends and lovers.

I had the pleasure of spending the evening with two girlfriends who I hadn't seen in years tonight. We met for wine, artichokes, macaroni and to discuss the book The Guersey Potato Peel Pie Literary Club, (which seemed appropriate because we were in a book club together for neary 10 years around 10 years ago.) My daughter who is now fifteen joined us and we ended up discussing The Glass Castle instead, and looking at photographs of their kids and houses. The best part about seeing them was that it felt as if time hadn't passed at all; the feeling of attraction and sharing in their lives was essentially eternal, and all it took was their presence to remind me of that.

I was actually nervous about their visit because I am a bit of an introvert. Facebook is just plain overwhelming to me sometimes for that reason, overwhelming and awe inspiring. The feeling I had tonight at seeing them was nothing short of Joy - and that's a pretty lovely place to be - to realize that friends are close by no matter how far away they may feel mentally.

Friendship is the point where time and space are essentially suspended. Meeting people and making connections on line is amazing from that perspective too. There are so many of us here, now, and the on line connection is a reminder of the ecumenical unity of all things.

When we connect with just one other person we are connecting with the All. It's tempting to get greedy then with our Joy, to try and horde our friends and lovers to ourselves. I know I have a tendency to do that - to grasp hard at the source of my Joy and squelch it. But I'm finding that there is no love but God's love, and there's no need to be a miser with that. Hording it stops the circulation - the whole flow of What Is - like when you hold your breath.

So the big epiphany for today is that love is inclusive. When we see it as exclusive, that's when we shrink up, step out of what's real, and ruin it for ourselves. Of course it's a fallacy, even for an introvert, to lock oneself away. It is the connection of true hearts that will set us free.

Today I focus on friends and lovers.