How Do We Get Through This? Part One

The tomatoes in my garden this summer are going bonkers. I've grown tomatoes for 30 years and I have NEVER had tomatoes like these. We moved them to a new spot, where we thought the dirt was worse, but the sunshine was better. We added the pile of compost, as we always do. We are watering steadily, but fertilizing a lot less than in previous years because, honestly, my nervous system is requiring new levels of tending. 

So. Mystery is having her way, and these tomatoes can't seem to get over themselves and we can't get over them, either! If you come to my corner, I'll insist you taste one.

I come to this corner each morning, for my ritual. I find the ripest jewel I can and savor how, with the smallest encouragement, it drops into my palm. I take in its perfect roundness, its saturated color. I pop it in my mouth and let it burst, savoring, my mind blown, every time, by the sweetness overtaking my taste buds. How can color and sweetness like this be born of dirt? I try to remain standing, so as not to embarrass or alarm the neighbors innocently walking their dogs. 

I taste and I swallow and I promise, with all of my cells: I take you in. I receive your luscious goodness. I remember: This is your body. This is your lifeblood.

I pray, May all that is you become me. May I embody your juiciness, sweetness, and nourishment. May I awaken and surrender to the miracle that what's gone to mush in the back of life's refrigerator, what's fallen, brittle and dry from life's storms, what's been tossed— sometimes with relief and other times with shame or grief— into the compost, it ALL belongs. It ALL becomes part of the (r)evolution of life. 

This is the ecstasy of the Eucharist. It was given to us first when the hour was late. Because even, and especially when the darkness deepens, we need ecstasy's nourishment.

Ecstasy seems to find me most reliably in the garden. Where does ecstasy find you?

In making love? Or in the waters of Lake Michigan?  At the dinner table? Or in creative process? In dance? 

What matters, my loves, is that you you let yourself be found, that you receive all Love has to offer. With all your presence. What matters is that you don't punish the Beloved or yourself, thinking, "I don't deserve this." Oh, the anguish of that grief.

It was never about being lovable enough, good enough, smart enough, competent enough, or some overlord's system of reward and punishment. It has only ever been about Love.

Remember, Judas, too, was offered bread and wine. No one is left out. Only we do that to ourselves.

What if Judas would have savored that meal? Or all the ones before it?

Do you remember the de Chardin quote: Humanity is being taken to the point where it will have to choose between suicide or adoration." 

Perhaps this has always been the choice, but it is only more clear now. Adore. And find yourself adored. Let it happen. Something marvelous will be conceived. Love given and received always creates something



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Lorilyn Wiering