If this coming week is about anything, it’s about amazing Love.
A practice that I recently read about and started doing sounds a little syrupy, but the results are quite beautiful, I promise: When you see someone, friend or stranger, think “I love you and I’m thankful for you.”
I found that an afternoon spent walking the streets of Seattle and doing this made the pink cherry blossoms more vivid and the sun more radiant. And people seemed…well…more solid, more real…since I was not so lost in my own ruminations. I found myself imagining the lives they were living and praying for them.
But in greeting people I knew, the practice made me realize how little I verbalize my love for people. I wondered why I’m so reticent to look a friend in the eye and feel the full force of my gratitude, enough to let the words tumble out, in all their shy joy.
God spoke the Word, calling the cosmos into existence. God spoke Love and it created a vast, pulsing home for a zillion billion worlds. What could our Word of love create?
I remember a fellow student at St John’s, Walter Kiefer, said that we have no idea the power of love. If we would but delve deeply, we would find its capacity to heal and transform more powerful and solid than anything else that exists.
This week, as you practice silently greeting people with love and gratitude, I invite you to pick one person, allowing the Spirit to call them to mind as you read this, and let them know you are thankful for them. You may be the angel that refreshes them in their Gethsemane.
(Art: Gethsemane, Anthony Falbo)