Imagine for a moment: It’s your last day on this beautiful Earth. As you draw in each breath with a sense of gratitude, you are finally able to pause and reflect upon the love poem that has lived through you.
How will your love poem read? What words, stories, feelings, sensations, and rhythms will form the verse? In what ways will love have woven itself into this world through your hands, your mind, your intention, and your heart? How has the world’s love for you woven itself into the life you’ve lived?
I do believe, most deeply, that the world is filled with love for us, and in all moments the world is beckoning, enticing, inviting us to giggle and smile and pause to feel the embrace of this love.
I’m not speaking of some commercialized, surface-oriented love that is there just to make us feel better if we’re feeling down. No, I’m speaking of an intensely soulful love that is unconditional, non-judgmental, and seeking no result other than for us to be ignited by its presence.
This love is never discriminatory, never withheld, and is bestowed upon every single human and living being without expectation or limit. The more conscious of it we are, the more we open ourselves up to receive it and reciprocate it.
The stunning capacity we have for love is mirrored in the stunning capacity this world has in its love for us.
As with all things, what we give attention expands. As we give this pure love our attention, we expand as well.
This idea of love is not new. How many ancestors do we carry with us in our blood and air and soil and water who have repeated this reminder, this essential truth of human existence and experience?
We are not an accident.
We are not solely creatures of destruction and violence. We are made for this world, and we are made of this world. And the stunning capacity we have for love is mirrored in the stunning capacity this world has in its love for us.
Have you forgotten? I sometimes forget.
Yet here in Chile, as I consciously make more time for quiet, for simply paying attention, I find myself more often resting in wonder at the wild love poems this world is writing to me each day. Each day we truly are, again, invited to fall in love.
The world wants nothing more than this — our presence, available to receive the love that the world bestows.
Each sunrise is a love poem. Each sunset: a sonnet.
The wind carrying the vibrant tones of the fast-descending waterfall, interweaving its roar with the far-carrying and fluttering birdsong: a most divine love song of presence.
The bursts of color and delicate beauty of freshly bloomed spring flowers and the out-of-nowhere rainbows that tickle us with glee are all love notes.
The moment the sunshine nudges aside that cold, dark shadow and wraps you in its deliciously warm beams is an embrace of pure love.
Stones and clouds and leaves and puddles and pony spots — shaped like hearts, arriving in our paths in subtle, quiet moments — are love messengers.
Just as easily as we can begin to receive the love of the world with our presence and attention, we can also consciously weave our love into the world with this simple practice: paying attention and being present for the experiences we are living as they unfold.
It’s easy to forget. It’s easy to believe otherwise when billboards block those heart-shaped clouds and when glossy phone screens draw our attention away from those split seconds that the rainbow shows itself. When the podcast sounding in my earbuds blocks out the sounds of soft, lovely birdsong dancing with wind-tousled leaves, I miss this love song meant for me. When I’m walking outside with my head full of my to-do lists or recounting something that I did wrong or someone I feel I’ve let down, and I don’t notice how my body naturally responds to that change of temperature moving from shadow to sunshine, I miss that pause — I miss that moment of receiving the love being offered.
Just as we can easily pass by the love notes from the Earth, we can also easily overlook all of the open windows through which we are meant to send our love out into the world — the love that so masterfully forms and shapes this poem living through us.
And just as easily as we can begin to receive the love of the world with our presence and attention, we can also consciously weave our love into the world with this simple practice: paying attention and being present for the experiences we are living as they unfold.
“As I imagine myself as an old woman at the end of my life and ask myself how I will evaluate my time here, there is only one question that concerns me: Did I love well? There are a thousand ways to love other people and the world–with our touch, our words, our silences, our work, our presence. I want to love well. This is my hunger. I want to make love to the world by the way I live in it, by the way I am with myself and others every day. So I seek to increase my ability to be with the truth in each moment, to be with what I know, the sweet and the bitter. I want to stay aware of the vastness of what I do not know. This is what brings me to the journey. I do not want to live any other way.”
~ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER, THE INVITATION
Our presence is what crafts the stanzas and the stunning, brilliant prose of the love poem living through us.
Oh what a magnificent invitation from dear Oriah, to notice that something as simple as our full presence for one another and for this world is an act of love. Our smiles and laughter given so generously and genuinely are our shared love language. We can weave our love into our work, into the words we choose to use, into the relationships we cultivate, and into the art we create. Our love can be a key ingredient in the meals we cook and in the conversations we have, simply with our decision to make it so.
Cultivating a sense of presence — the willingness to simply pay attention to each moment of our lives — this is our opening, this is our invitation to fully participate in the crafting of the love poem, to fully honor the incredible exchange of love that is available to us in all moments we live and breathe.
Our presence with our love is what gives it wings to sail out that window into the larger world beyond. Our presence is what crafts the stanzas and the stunning, brilliant prose of the love poem living through us.
Thank you, Greta! 🌳🌳🌳🌿🌿🌱
Beautiful. ‘We are not an accident.’
So Beautiful!!!?
Ah, Greta. This is beautiful.
Amen/Ahwomen and thank you beautiful soul for your soul-nourishing sharing!
Really beautiful, thought provoking and invitational, Greta. Thank you.
Lovely! Thank you. I’ll refer back to this reflection.
What a wonderful thought, to think that Love weaves itself into this world through my hands, mind, intention and heart, but so utterly True! This could form my early morning intention, my morning mantra – “Love, may you weave yourself into this world through our being this day” would be blissful. Reminds me a little of the poem ‘The Weaving’ which was a favourite of lovely Corrie ten Boom, yet says so much more to my heart. Gives me permission, allows me to walk out into the day just being me.
I too believe that the world is filled with Love for us, to share, to walk in, to breathe. This world IS Love and we are Love and whenever we remember that, we are One.
Wow, thank you for this lovely writing Greta.. this reminded me what I am missing while trying to accomplish big things and ticking off my to-do list. This reminds me that Love is the way..
Many blessings, Puneet
Dear Greta, this is absolutely SO beautiful!!! My heart is overwhelmed with such a feeling of love after reading this! I will read It again and again. THANK-YOU for sharing this!!! What a gift it is and you are! Bless you, dear Greta.
Love, Sheila?
Thank you for this lovely acknowledgement Sheila, such deep blessings to you as well, it is such a gift to know this piece invoked love within you <3
Wow! What a beautiful word/photograph/video poetic piece you created! I watched the video about 10 times (perhaps to catch a rainbow heart-shaped pony breath?) , such a subtle and clever way of showing how there are instanteous moments of beauty all around us if we can be alert and present to them. Thank you!
Thank you for pausing to share this reflection, I am so thankful to know this piece was so moving for you. <3