For Today: The Tenderness of the Heart

"Hold your heart in all tenderness. Something healing this way comes." Jen Lemen

"Maybe it's not that we are afraid of love. Maybe we are just afraid of not being loved back."
Terry Hershey

It doesn't take long before something comes along to trip up my good intentions, and yet, by setting a word for my day early in the morning and grounding it with vision pages, I find in the midst of daily challenges this word comes back to me, and it's just what I need to return to my heart and retreat out of my head. So it was with the word I chose five days ago. Delight. 

This word came to me unbidden and I began my vision board. The first picture is of a white dog with freckles around his nose and two yellow tennis balls in his mouth: one dead center and the other somehow in the embrace of his right cheek. How did he do it? I got the feeling he would have three green balls in his mouth if possible. Makes me laugh. And above him is a Carmen Miranda type with grape castenets. Ole. On the right two languorous women stretched on pillows dozing off from reading and under that a great busty coloratura bursting forth with song. I called it Delight: Let Your Senses Take Flight. Then the day started.

I had several unpleasant pieces of business to deal with first off and they were not at all easy to accomplish on new landline phones. I had a hard time hearing and others had a hard time understanding. In a few hours I was exhausted and dispirited and ready for bed, but it was still quite early and the day was ahead. Delight, delight, delight.  I said it again and again and by the afternoon, my day had changed. This is no fluke. The day before, my word was Open. At the bottom of the vision page I had written, "Be willing to Mix and Match." As that day went on, I realized I was feeling better, and open and noticing my micro feelings changed often. Best not to believe any of them for very long.

It's easy to color a day with sadness, disappointment, feeling unloved, and the whole catastrophe of life. Most days are somewhere in between, and our job is to maximize our own happiness, kindness and health. Most days have a little bit of everything combined. Here's a quote from a writing by Rumi: Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there." And who's out there will be you, a you you accept and are willing to love.

Baruch ata adonai...may I keep my heart tender and soft. May I remember the tenderness of my heart when I  become afraid, which is often covered up by anger and impatience. May I open my eyes to find it's me out there knocking to come in. May I accept myself with love no matter what. Amen