Love Is the Real Celebration

"The important thing is not to think much but to love much."— Saint Teresa of Ávila

"My vocation is love."— Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

"The only way to strengthen love is by meditation. There's no other way, because the love which we get by experience cannot be compared to any other type of love."— Maharaj Charan Singh

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Yesterday and today turned into snippets of moments that I'll probably remember for a long time, even though nothing especially dramatic happened. Looking back on it during the drive home from Baltimore where I was visiting family and friends, I realized almost every hour had been spent with people who matter deeply to me.

Yesterday started with shopping and lunch with my oldest son and his partner. We wandered through a few stores, talked about whatever happened to come up, laughed, and enjoyed a meal together. There wasn't an agenda or anything we were trying to accomplish. We were simply together, and the older I get, the more I appreciate how rare that can be.

Later in the evening I had dinner and stayed overnight with one of my closest friends. We raised our children together, and for years we spent countless hours talking on the phone, meeting over coffee, sitting in each other's homes, or just doing everyday life side by side.

This morning, over coffee, we slipped right back into one of those conversations that never seems to end, no matter how much time passes between visits. As I was getting ready to leave, we laughed about something we've been saying for years. We always joke that if we talked more often, we'd probably have less to say and so it wouldn’t take so long every time we try to connect. Then we looked at each other and laughed, remembering that when our children were little, we talked for hours almost every single day and somehow still never ran out of conversation. Some friendships don't seem to age. They simply keep going.

Before heading home, I spent another couple of hours with my son before he left to pick up his partner from work. We wandered around Trader Joe's, talked about life, looked at things neither of us needed, and enjoyed one more ordinary morning together before I started the drive back to Pennsylvania, back to family waiting there and my two dogs, who never let me forget how happy they are when I come home.

As our country celebrates its 250th birthday, I find myself thinking there wasn't anywhere else I wanted to be. Not at some big event. Not watching fireworks from the perfect spot. I wanted to be exactly where I'd been, spending time with people who have shared so much of my life.

The world feels heavy these days. There seems to be conflict everywhere you turn, and sometimes it feels as though people are forgetting how much we actually have in common. Maybe that's why this weekend feels special. It reminded me that the relationships we build over a lifetime really are what hold everything else together. We spend so much time chasing the next thing that it's easy to overlook what's already sitting right in front of us.

I also found myself checking my phone more than usual over the last two days. Like so many other people, I've become invested in the incredible journey of Kelsey Pfendler, the youngest rower and the first American woman to row solo across the mid-Pacific from California to Hawaii. Early this morning she finally reached Hawaii after weeks alone on the ocean. What she accomplished is hard to wrap my mind around. She became the youngest person ever to complete the crossing and finished almost nine days ahead of both the previous women's and men's records.

Watching the final updates come in I kept thinking that we tend to celebrate the finish line while forgetting what actually gets someone there. It wasn't one heroic moment. It was thousands of ordinary decisions made over and over again. One stroke. One sunrise. One difficult day that could have been the day she quit but wasn't. That's true of almost everything worth doing. It's certainly been true in my own spiritual life.

Kathy used to say that meditation was the single most important thing we could do. When I was younger, I accepted that because I trusted her. It made sense intellectually, but understanding something with your mind and knowing it through experience are two very different things. After years of meditation, I see it differently now.

People sometimes think meditation is about becoming calmer or having unusual spiritual experiences. That hasn't been my experience. For me, meditation has slowly changed the way I move through the world. It's increased my capacity to care about other people. It has softened parts of me that used to react quickly. It has made forgiveness easier, although certainly not automatic. Most of all, it has opened my heart in ways I never expected.

Looking back, I honestly don't think I experience life the same way I did even five years ago. Time with family feels richer than it once did. Old friendships feel deeper. I can find myself cheering for someone I'll probably never meet, simply because I admire what she's trying to do. I notice animals differently than I used to. I find myself looking at strangers and wondering about their lives instead of making assumptions about them.

That doesn't mean I've become some endlessly patient person. I haven't. I still get frustrated. I still make judgments. I still fail more often than I'd like. The difference is that I don't want to stay there anymore. Something inside me keeps pulling me back toward compassion instead.

Many years ago, while hurrying to work at a law office in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, I had an experience that changed the course of my life. Without any warning, what appeared to be empty space simply wasn't empty anymore. Every inch of it was filled with what looked like soft, translucent white clouds connecting everyone and everything within my field of vision. It was alive. It moved. It pulsed with an indescribable presence that I immediately recognized as God.

I've never found words that fully capture what happened that morning. I wasn't imagining it. I wasn't trying to convince myself of anything. I wasn't thinking about mystical experiences at all. I was simply on my way to work, and for a few moments I was allowed to see something that has stayed with me ever since. Everything in me and around me was part of this glowing, pulsing, all-consuming deep Love. I knew then and forevermore that Love is all there is. Nothing has ever felt more real.

Earlier that morning I'd been meditating on the express bus into Baltimore. Looking back now, I know the experience was a gift. More importantly, it planted something inside me.  It left me with a longing that has never disappeared, and that longing is what brings me back to my meditation chair every morning for two and a half hours. Not because I'm hoping to recreate that experience. I don't expect that. I sit because I know what I saw, and because it changed what I believe is possible.

As we celebrate our nation's 250th birthday, gratitude is what keeps coming to mind. I'm grateful for my son and the wonderful young woman who shares his life. I'm grateful for a friendship that has survived raising children, busy careers, and decades of conversations that somehow never seem to end. I'm grateful for a young woman who reminded millions of people that extraordinary things are still possible if someone is willing to keep putting one stroke in front of another.

Most of all, though, I'm grateful for Kathy. She taught me how to meditate. In doing that, she taught me how to love more deeply. Everything else has grown from that. It has changed the way I see my family, my friends, strangers, animals, and even people whose opinions are completely different from mine. Often, I find myself looking for what connects us instead of what divides us.  For me, that's one of the greatest gifts meditation has given.

On this Independence Day, I can't think of a greater freedom than slowly learning to live from that place of deep connection and love that is the very core of who we are. It doesn't happen all at once. At least it hasn't for me. It happens one day at a time, one meditation at a time, one ordinary moment at a time.

And for me today, that is the real celebration.