The experience of love gives us a renewed capacity to live our lives with less effort. It becomes less of a struggle, less competitive, less acquisitive, as it opens up for us what we have all glimpsed in some way at some time through love: that our essential nature is joyful. Deep down we are joyful beings. If we can learn to savour the gifts of life and see what life truly is, we will be better equipped to live with and through its tribulations, sorrows and suffering. This is what we learn gently, slowly, day by day, as we meditate. Mediation brings us to understand the wonder of the ordinary. We become less addicted to seeking extraordinary types of stimulation or distraction. We begin to find in the very ordinary things of daily life that this background radiation of love, the all-present power of God, is everywhere and at all times.
After meditation: “The Coming of Light” by Mark Strand in COLLECTED POEMS (New York: Knopf, 2014), p. 183.
The Coming of Light
Even this late it happens.
The coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
