Category: My Spiritual Life

A troubled and ill man, I never really understood how to love for most of my life, as I felt alone and unloved for almost all of my life.

I discovered the wonder of true love between two people when I met Maria, and I fell in love with her, and she fell in love with me. I had lived alone on a farm for six years when I met her; it was a loveless life.

I was thinking the other day that there is a distinct difference between people who experience love now and those who have loved or been loved in the past.

Those who live without love seem different to me – often (I’m generalizing) unhappy, angry, or touched with grievance.

It’s just my sense of things; I have no data or professional training to know for sure. I look at the angry, cold people running our country and sometimes think they have no idea what love is, so they can’t govern with it. Were they ever loved?

That’s not a discussion for our troubled and struggling media, or even for me. Maria and I both understand the great pain of inevitable separation; the better the relationship, the greater the pain. That’s the price of love. “No love can assure two people that they are totally in sync,” writes Spiritual Author Joan Chitister.

I’d add that no two people can ever be totally in sync, any more than a life can be perfect.

What I want to write about is not just the wonder of love, or Movie Star love,  but also the loneliness that comes with it. Love is the best thing that has ever happened to me; it helped me heal from a terrifying breakdown and has brought great happiness to my love.

Love means a lot of great things, but it also means a life rife with loneliness. It comes with the package.

The idea that loving and staying together in life is simple and always romantic is a fantasy. If falling in love is natural, staying in love is hard work. No one is an island, as the poet John Donne wrote. There is no perfect couple, no perfect love.

For one thing, we are all individuals with our own tastes, goals, experiences, agency, and beliefs. It is just not possible to live closely with another human and not know frustration, conflict, and irritation.

It seems that one person often becomes the one in charge, while the other plays a supporting role, sometimes switching back and forth.

For me, the most complex and most important part of love was coming to understand that true love is about learning to love someone else more than I love myself. It requires giving a part of me to my lover, and that can be lonely in itself.

True love is never constant or without pain, tension,  and concern.

Psychologists say we always want more from the other person than we can ever hope to get.

Love is a long, arduous journey from the self to the other. If we are fortunate and aware, we come to realize that the purpose of love asks us to take us out of our own cravings so we can pay genuine attention to someone else.

It is the measure of our ability to get beyond selfishness to understand someone else’s need for affection, approval, and understanding.

That is never easy, but always essential if the love is true. Without empathy, I doubt there can be love.

Love was the measure of my own selfishness, not just a judgment of the others’ selflessness. Learning to love someone else more than myself was a turning point in my life. It still is.

Loneliness is built into any genuine love relationship. It taught me how needy I am and how much of myself I have to give away to another.

Loneliness and solitude are different things.

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Love is not about possession or the total absorption of another person. It’s about freeing others to be themselves and fully accepting who and what they are.

I believe that respect for another’s independence is the foundation of love, yet that requires – demands – a certain distance, which is what I sometimes call the loneliness of love.

That is not loneliness in the conventional or sad sense of the word, but a spiritual reality arising from accepting the distinctiveness of all people, their inner lives, and their personal journeys.

There is also the loneliness that comes from expecting what no other human can give to another – total satisfaction, total presence, total joy, and total understanding.

To me, love is a journey built on ruthless self-criticism.

It means that every day of my love for Maria, I ask myself at some point whether I am neglecting, not understanding, or not supporting her in her life.

To fall in love is easy; to stay in love requires a commitment that needs to be renewed again and again. That commitment leads to trust, which holds the love together.

Love for me is not a clay mold that makes two people the same.

Love is the dream that enables both of us to be the best people we can be, as we define it and believe it.

No love can fill the holes we find in our lives, in the things we lack in ourselves. But we can always comfort one another, support them, and root for them.

I love for the sake of the other, as well as for myself; that kind of love is the thing that transcends loneliness and makes it worth every minute of the connection.

Maria and I talk about that, fight for that, live it, day after day, test after test, challenge after challenge.

Good for love. I can’t imagine living without it. It challenges me to be a real human being.

“Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together … in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons and daughters and Children of God. That means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in the creative freedom that he has given to our own lives, and to the lives of others, by choosing the truth.” – Thomas Merton.

In my intense years of working towards a spiritual life, nothing has impressed me or guided me more than realizing that other humans and I have been given the sacred right to choose our own lives and live them fully by choosing to tell the truth. We can do good or not. We can lie or tell the truth. That choice has shaped my life and given it direction. I appreciate the freedom to choose.

The very idea of truth and the disagreements about it are tearing the country into pieces; there is no longer any common understanding of what the truth is or what it means to a society as divided and diverse as ours. I can only speak for myself, and Thomas Merton, as always, speaks for me and guides me.

I choose not to exist passively, nor to select the path of hatred, grievance, and argument. I have lied often in my life, but I won’t choose lying and cruelty, as the saying goes. I accept the freedom I have been given to live my life morally and in truth. No other animal on the earth has been given this gift of freedom and honesty. I am determined to accept and honor it.

I can’t speak for anyone else. All I can do is to live a whole and meaningful life by choosing the truth. I hope there is a God; if not, I can be my own guide. I can’t speak for anyone else, but religion has led me in this direction, and life and my own searching have helped me to understand its importance.

For much of my life, the Kabbalah, the mysterious ancient Judaic writings from anonymous mystics in caves, was my Bible; mysticism is a kind of faith for outsiders and people who seek their truths and realities rather than someone else’s.

I am a mystic.

The Kabbalah is the mystic’s version of the Bible. It is, for me, the faith of the time, the call for the kind of people we ought to be and need to be for ourselves in others.

The Kabbalah is just about doing good deeds, but it is a state of mind, a way of life, the way I wish to be, even if I can’t always be.

In a world, and sadly, in our country, greed, lies, and cruelty have replaced faith and goodness with anger and cruelty.

I don’t wish for this to happen to me, and the news brought me back to the Kabbalah and recalled what it meant to me, as many Christians have at times embraced the goodness and faith of Jesus.

I found a moral grounding to aspire to.

I drifted away from the Kabbalah for a while. I’m always trying out something different, but the news has brought me back. Hey, I think, isn’t this how we were meant to be, not who we are now?

The God of the Kabbalah was kind, but he was also clear; he repeatedly warned that he would not tolerate cruelty and hatred towards others, primarily when it was based solely on differences.

For me, this cruelty and coldness are heresy.

In Kabbalah, kindness and charity are not merely occasional kindness, but fundamental foundations of spiritual growth and connection to the Divine, as understood by the people who follow them.

Watching the news these days with shock and sadness, I pulled out one of my six books on the Kabbalah and read more about God’s designs for humanity.

The Kabbalah describes Chesed, which is Hebrew for loving kindness, mercy, or grace, and is one of the ten divine emanations in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

It represents the boundless love of one’s God, benevolence, and a desire to spread goodness and kindness throughout the world.

Performing acts of goodness emulates our vision of God. Good, the mystics wrote, is the “right arm of God,” a symbol of divine mercy going out into the world.

The God of the Kabbalah won me over at the time; I embraced that individualistic and peculiar faith, even though it incorporated many obvious ideas from Jesus Christ and the Christian prophets.

I found nothing to trouble me about Jesus Christ and his beliefs, or the Kabbalah and its teachings.

I was just beginning my spiritual work. These values are essential to me.

One of the core commands of the Kabbalah Divine is that kindness and charity to others are a moral and legal obligation, and human beings are responsible for their own and the equitable distribution of it.

By actively practicing kindness and charity, even in small and thoughtful ways, people can transform their souls and desires and connect with the Divine Light, whatever it might be.

This is what I am trying to do.

Mystics are not dogmatic with dogma pamphlets; they each form their own opinions and see what they see. They are all different.

I related to the goodness and love of the Kabbala. I recall that this God warned the people of the earth about only four things: Hatred, Cruelty, Harming the Earth, and Selfishness.

I think we have some work to do.

The Kabbalah asserts that charity is the only means by which we can control our destiny. I think of that every day when I write about the Cambridge Food Pantry and their need, and when I see what is happening to our country.

Those who harm others will be punished, warns the Kabbala; it would be heresy.

I’m still not sure what God is, but if it’s Kabbalah,  we were warned. In the meantime, this is the God I can relate to, especially now.

I’d rather be good than not.

The summer solstice, which occurred last night, marks the beginning of the astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This is a sacred ancient ritual that signalled the start of the planting season and was crucial for the survival of the ancients, who needed it to thrive and had no weather service.

It was a holy holiday to them, and is something of a religion to us. We think of those ancients often.

The solstice is the longest day of the year in terms of daylight hours and also signifies the sun’s highest arc in the sky. This event occurs when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted most directly towards the sun, giving the ancients a sense of when they can plan their meals. It is an integral part of our spiritual and mystical lives.

Getting started, getting dark.

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We celebrate the hospice to give thanks for our lives and honor the countless people who fed themselves, and then the world, with little to go by but their curiosity, faith, and endurance.

The most common forms of celebration for the Pagans were centered on the sun’s power and the abundance of the natural world. The practices include lighting bonfires, gathering herbs, and taking nature walks, all of which occur annually at Bedlam Farm. Many also gathered for feasting, dancing, and staying up late to witness the sun rise on the longest day of the year.

Maria and I take it more seriously than any other holiday; we feel a deep connection to those people. We lit the bonfire (we’ve been collecting wood all winter, mostly from fallen limbs brought down by storms and winds) at 8 p.m.. We let the fire burn down for four hours; we never walk away when the fire is burning brightly.

We sat and talked, often silent, and took the opportunity to think about where we are going in our lives over the coming Summer and Beyond.

We sat outside until 11:30 and made some herbal tea inside the house, and talked; we got to sleep around midnight. No dancing. The solstice reminds us both of how fortunate we are to be here and how hard it was to get here.

It was a beautiful experience, as always; the fire was perfect, there was no wind, and it was warm. The mosquitoes were on me, but I sprayed some repellent on myself and only got three bites. It was a special night for both of us, and we gave thanks for it. It felt wonderful sitting there and looking at the fire for hours, holding Maria’s hand for much of the time and feeling her love for me and mine for her. We will never forget those bonfires.

Perfect bonfire, lit at 8 p.m. It was hypnotic.

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Right after we lit the fire, zip, Zinnia, Fate, and the donkeys were with us. Zip got bored and left. Above, the fire was going, and it began to get dark. The donkeys disappeared. The sheep never came near us.

Before we leave, we pour water all around the bonfire ashes and then rake them out over the water. We check three times before going to sleep. When we left, there were only ashes, no wind, and a happy solstice night. It was a beautiful fire. Maria put old paper bags beneath the wood to get it going.

Good bye to the solstice until next year.