My parents were poor at the beginning of their marriage, but compensated by adroitly making everything: our furniture, clothes, food, car maintenance, house repair, toys were all from/by their hands. This is how we were to know that they loved us, as they were prettymuch emotionally damaged and unable to express love physically, heartfully or verbally.
Of course, it took me DECADES to unravel all this, especially my dad’s attitude to me. Frrrankly, I think now that he was in competition with us for Mom’s affections. We surely got heavily put down! Was he EVER snide and derisive!! This was devastating. After leaving home I spent YEARS chasing around after other men, thinking they had something I’d been deprived of: LOVE.
I was in a lot of pain from this. The time I wasn’t spending on men I spent either on spiritual paths trying to get out of my body and off the planet, or in some sort of mental/emotional program trying to dig out what it was that hurt so much.
Jumping over years of unravellings to summarize: I got pretty sane. Luckily!!! Could just as easily be drooling in an asylum now on drugs and ECT.
One turning point was being told by a wise man that at my first wedding, when my dad offered me a handshake as the only physical contact he’d originated in my nineteen and a half years, in that gesture he was giving me everything he had. Everything. That was IT.
(What a rush!!! All those years I’d thought he was ‘taking it down the road’, when actually he was going down the road LOOKING for it… )
The next rush was realizing that Responsibility does not mean blame (as in: “Who’s RESPONSIBLE for this mess??”), but rather Power & Cause and Source.
So now. Here I am, still needing a drip of Love every day… don’t need much, but I do need SOME… and where, in this world of mortals, is that supposed to come from???
Well, thanks to studies in the realm of Biodynamics, here’s the glad news: Love comes from the Sun. Yes. Shines that stuff down on us every day! And at night you can get it second-hand, bounced off the Moon (with a piquant flavoring added by Herself…) Check this out! Go turn your face up to the Sun. That’s pure love you feel.
This fact/feeling can be woven in nicely with the basic tenet of my Church of the Open Forest: Every step a blessing, every breath a prayer. I can breathe in Love, and then breathe out Gratitude. I can even go metaphysical and bring Gratitude up out of the Earth through the soles of my feet and out my heart to the Sun– a human conduit between two Worthy and Generous Entities. And a satisfying way to spend this lifetime…
Dear One, may the longtime sun shine down on you, all love surround you, and may you walk in beauty to the end of your days.