LOVE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

foggy mountain



Wet, cold, foggy day all day, rain on and off, never big rain, periods of shower. We need the wet. It's been dry a long time. Tapo has been wanting to cuddle with me all day. I sit to read awhile and she is on my lap. I sit at the computer and she is on the desk between my arms. I speak to her to keep her knowing my attention is on her. It's a form of petting without hands. She's wanted to be held, cradled, talked to. She's been through a week of such intense fear she didn't eat and lost a notable amount of weight. She's relaxing now, coming down out of the fear perhaps emotionally drained and needs her batteries charged. I tell her she's still my number one and she purrs. Caterpillar has become vocal when she wants to be held. She'll walk up to my feet, look up and meow with eyes asking for attention. For awhile I'd asked her to show me what she wanted, walked to the kitchen for food, walk to the door for out. Neither. She stands and looks up at me. I get it. She wants me to hold her. Both of them spent all day yesterday outside until dark. They'd have been out today too, but for the wet.



Evidently Ralph Stanley played at the Blue Ridge Music Center this evening, may be playing now. I wanted to go. Didn't want to drive the parkway in the fog. Didn't want to sit in the rain with an umbrella. Didn't have the money for admission. A whole lot of obstacles between here and there. I don't suffer from it. Any more, I don't regret what I can't do, too much. Don't regret that I can't own enough contemporary art to build a museum to contain it. Don't regret I've never been mistaken for Cool, don't own an impressive car, don't aspire to wealth, don't want much of anything, can't have almost everything, so it works out. No problems.



The last couple days my heart has been overridden by mind, by reason, by rational thought telling the heart it can't have what it wants. My heart wanted to keep the puppy, was broken to have to let the puppy go. It was the same feeling as daddy saying, You can't have it. The need to be practical and sensible took charge of the issue. Circumstances are such that when I look at them with a balanced mind, I see easily I can't have the dog. But the heart fell in love with a puppy that needed a human when I believed I needed a dog. By now I can see I do not want a dog, nor do I need a dog. The cats are comfortable. I'm comfortable. For a week we were in a state of turbulence like the dust cloud behind a pickup on a gravel road after weeks without rain. We're back to peace now. It feels comfortable, at home.



This morning I heard somebody on the radio say something about the voice of God speaking in our hearts. I've thought about that all day. It couldn't be an auditory vocal voice. Then what is it that's "speaking" in our hearts? All I can come up with is love. When love is active in our hearts, then maybe that is God speaking. If God=Love, then Love=God. Then it must be that any form of love is God. Love of child for mother, love between friends, love between lovers, love between humans and animals, any way the word love is used when it's of the heart. Like on tshirts that say, I (big red heart) NY, they could as well say I God NY. Same meaning. The red heart stands for love; therefore, it stands for God. Isn't it said a prayer from the heart is the only prayer heard by God/love? That sets me to wondering if God is with us when we're feeling love of whatever form, then God isn't that far away. God isn't far away at all. In fact, God is as close to us as our own heartbeat. Right here, out in the open. Maybe God is like the wind in that way, it can't be seen with physical eyes, but the physical effects of it can be seen in the trees, in flags, in sails. The effects of substanceless wind on the physical, like the surface of the ocean, works about the way love moves the physical world when it's set in motion.



It's one of those things I can see, but can't explain, and doubt an explanation would matter if I could. I'm not one to say love can be sectioned in such ways that certain kinds of love don't count as God inclusive, because they're "carnal," of the body. I can't help but say, so what. It's like God saying, I'm every facet of this diamond but one. I don't buy it. That feeling of love in the heart I can't help but see as the flow of God, the flow of spirit like the wind flowing through a willow tree. When I feel love in the heart, tears flow from my eyes, my temperament calms way down, or blood pressure, and happiness is what I feel. I felt that every Saturday morning on the radio show playing mountain music to the people who love it. Perhaps that's why I miss it so much, I loved it so much. It's a similar feeling to having to give up a puppy. I think of my friend who doesn't believe in a personal God and feel sorrow for him. I like to think of God as more personal than we mean by personal. I can't think of God as Out There any more, but In Here, the wind that is the life force within that through the green fuse drives the flower. Thank you, Dylan Thomas.