June 24, 2020: A Good Time to Fall in Love... with you.

"From Out the Cave" by Joyce Sutphen, from Straight Out of View. © Beacon Press, 1995.

When you have been at war with yourself for so many years that you have forgotten why,

when you have been driving for hours and only gradually begin to realize that you have lost the way,

 when you have cut hastily into the fabric,

when you have signed papers in distraction,

when it has been centuries since you watched the sun set or the rain fall,

and the clouds, drifting overhead, pass as flat as anything on a postcard;

when, in the midst of these everyday nightmares,

you understand that you could wake up,

you could turn and go back to the last thing you remember doing with your whole heart:

that passionate kiss,

the brilliant drop of love rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,

then you wake,

you stumble from your cave,

blinking in the sun,

naming every shadow as it slips.

What good or surprising things have happened for you since this pandemic began? I would love to know! Send me an email, a text, or call (just leave a message) …

If you can’t think of anything, may I recommend learning to love and cherish yourself?

The root of compassion is self-regard (in case self-love seems like a bridge too far… I get that.)

On Sunday, I will share more about this, and a few ways it is done. Hope you’ll join me and your fellow GNUUCers.

MEANWHILE: Starting when I return from leave, in August, we will join a community book reading that all can take part in. The book is How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Please buy it from an independent bookstore if you can! Then start reading. We will tap into this and some other materials throughout the Fall, and next Spring, you will be invited to a lunch meeting with the author!

This quarantine will yield so many things of value that we can’t begin to comprehend. A great shifting of energies and will is going on before our very eyes. Be a part of it.

Much love,   Cynthia