Margaret's Bench -- June 2008
(…a continuation of thoughts from Margaret’s Bench of
April,
June,
July/August, and
September
’07.)
Three separate times, a love without bounds showed itself to me
so that I looked and paid attention, so that I could see.
My first sighting of big love began in the parking lot of my
hometown grocery store, when I suddenly started to *see*
ordinary people around me—shoppers, their kids, the store
checkers and baggers—as having love built right into them, from
the time they were conceived until forever. (Details in
an earlier Margaret’s Bench.)
What I saw wasn’t a trait that varied from one individual to
another, like hair color or I.Q. It was basic to being human,
and it was universal. It would be with them—with each of
us—regardless how we handled particular loves in our own lives.
That first sighting lasted an hour or so, then the intensity of
the vision faded away. But what I’d seen—the news it
brought—stayed with me.
Three years later, my eyes opened to another glimpse of
universal love. Oddly enough, the second encounter also happened
in a parking lot. Located at an open-air mall in a desert town
in southern California, the car park was far from my home in the
Pacific Northwest. (I wrote about this incident in greater
detail in chapter nine of my book,
Sacred Attention.)
It was late afternoon. I had just seen Red Dragon—a very
scary movie—and was strolling around outside the movie theater,
trying to walk off my jitters before returning to the arts
colony where I was a resident. For weeks I’d been grappling with
various fears inspired by demons such as bee stings and writer’s
block. If I’d known just how scary a movie Red Dragon
was, I probably would have opted instead for the theater’s other
cinematic choice that afternoon: My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
But there I was, walking around the car park, hoping to calm
down enough to get to sleep that night, when I noticed teenage
couples, two by two, gathering at a big table at an outdoor
restaurant. They were all dressed in formal finery, as if for a
prom—or maybe for a big fat California wedding.
Balanced between childhood and adulthood, those beautiful young
men and women looked like angels to me. Watching them filled me
with joy, and paradoxically, it also filled me with fear. For
weeks, the daily news had buzzed with reports of an unknown
sniper in the Washington D.C. area, shooting at people in public
spaces just like this one. Suddenly, I was afraid someone nearby
might be inspired to do the same.
Excerpt from chapter 9 of
Sacred Attention,
SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2007.
That night, I walked around the
mall troubled, thinking about
fear, about the sniper, and
feeling like a target. I felt terror at the evil
the world contains. Felt how
that evil is around us, and within us,
along with all the rest that
makes up our humanity. At the same time,
moving through that community
space, surrounded by angels, I had
a moment of grace. Felt how I
was part of the world, moving through
it with all the people, each of
us carrying whatever courage and love
we could hold. In that moment,
I had a sense of belonging in this
universe. I felt loved. Loved
along with everyone around me, snipers
and victims alike. Not a soft
love. Not a teddy-bear love. This was
more like real live grizzly
bear love, appropriate for humans—such
dangerous, vulnerable, and
beautiful creatures of God.
My hyper-awareness of universal love—love big enough for snipers
and victims alike—lasted through that night and much of the next
day. Then, like the sighting at Safeway, the intensity of
feeling faded over time. The news stayed with me.
Three more years passed. My third encounter with universal love
started in a cemetery, which I guess you could say is just
another kind of parking lot.
I
was sitting on the grass in an old cemetery in Ashland, Oregon,
home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. David and I had flown
in the day before to meet up with Mindy Finberg, a friend of
David’s from his college days, and to see The Belle’s
Stratagem, a play for which Mindy had acted as dramaturge.
It was summer in southern Oregon. Midday temperatures reached
close to 100 degrees. Whenever we stepped outdoors, the dry heat
smacked into us and seemed to suck the moisture right out of us.
It was a dramatic change from the mild, soft air of our home on
the Olympic Peninsula.
Early that morning, I’d walked out to the cemetery near our
hotel to enjoy the brief cool of daybreak. Sitting under an
ancient oak tree, I had the slowly dawning sensation of being
buoyed up on the love of God, like sitting and gently bouncing
on a great inflated ball. The ball was so big, I couldn’t
possibly fall off. It was light, uplifting, and fun—the best
beach ball ever. This buoyant sensation stayed with me through
the day, a day I remember as alternating between states of arid
heat and soaking wetness.
A
walk back to the hotel, a quick shower, followed by a longer
walk through rising temperatures to a diner, where I drank
glasses of cold water with my breakfast. A mid-morning swim in
the hotel pool, followed by a walk with David through stunning
heat to meet Mindy and her family for a chatty lunch, where I
poured more glasses of water down my parched throat. Another
visit to the pool in the afternoon, this time with David joining
me. I swam through his legs, a favorite game of ours. Another
shower in the room, followed by an interlude of marital
canoodling in our king-size hotel bed. One more quick shower.
For dinner I went off on my own, walking through town in the
early-evening heat and finding a small restaurant where I had a
good burger accompanied by more glasses of cold water. Across
the dark paneled room sat another woman, also dining alone. She
was a few years older than me, nicely dressed and wearing a hat.
She ordered a glass of white wine with her meal and drank it
with evident enjoyment. Watching her open pleasure made me feel
good too, as if we had shared the cup. Through it all, the
sensation of resting on this big, great, huge, expansive ball of
love stayed with me.
Almost three years have passed since our trip to Ashland. Today,
I’m not aware of that big ball of love every minute of every
day. But I can evoke it right now, sitting here at my desk. I
know it’s there. The news stayed with me.
So there you have it: three different encounters with big love.
Three different sightings of one mystery. It’s as if a voice
were telling me,
“You could see it this way. Or, you could look at it this
other way. Or, you could picture it this other way still.”
From talking and listening to others, I know that moments of
transcendence happen to lots of people. I doubt if I’m blessed
with any more of them than your average, run-of-the-mill
spiritual pilgrim. Years passed between these events, years in
which I often wandered far, far from any sense of big love in
the universe at all.
Still, I can remember each of my three sightings as real and
true, just as real and true as love songs, scary movies, and dry
heat.
Taken together, they’ve pushed me to take another look at a
proposition that’s been offered up countless times by mystics of
all faiths, a proposition so implausible-sounding, it actually
helped drive me away from Christianity many years ago. I’m
talking about the unlikely yet persistent notion that God is
Love.
More on this subject at another time.
-- Margaret
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