In reflecting on goals, hopes, and dreams for 2024, what does Love ask, of each one of us, in this year, in this month, in this moment? Pause and listen, for the call of love, deep within the heart. Opening, allowing, noticing.

Someone from the local community attending a workshop here recently commented that this place is a beacon of light in the triangle area. This doesn’t just happen. It takes commitment together to learn, grow, and live our communal values.

As a community, what light are we radiating out to the world? In our work for justice and equity, how do actually show up in action and practice to make the world a better place?

This can seem dauting when faced with all that is challenging right now—from weather disasters and climate crisis to human conflicts and ongoing wars, systemic oppression to democracy on the run, the world needs healing on so many levels.

When we are overwhelmed at all the things we see and hold on our hearts…
it’s OK to pause, breathe, and make a conscious choice to find our center.
Then we can reflect on our choices and intentions.

How do we show up? How do we talk to others and ourselves? How do we express care?

A first step to understanding Love as spiritual practice is to hold our loved ones close and hold our values close.

When we embody love, not just as an emotion, but as a way of being, it changes everything.

Love as spiritual practice.

How do we seek to create change in the world? How do our values come to life?

Love is the power that holds us together.

Recognizing how we are with one another in the practice of love, is a powerful and transformative act.

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance— is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work, in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.”
~James Baldwin

Love calls us to be that mirroring and magnifying presence for one another.

Engaging Love as spiritual practice changes HOW we relate to the world. If we see the world divided into oppositional categories, us vs. them, the process of “othering” creates separation, which perpetuates suffering.

When we can learn and practice ways to bridge separation, then we are transformed by the call of Love.

When we practice offering compassion for all beings, then we awaken a power that can transform our very way of being in the world.

Who we are and HOW we are matters. Each and every one of us is needed on this planet, and, in this spiritual community. To build beloved community…Requires some work, some PRACTICE, to center, to return in love, again and again.

This is how Liberating Love works. It activates a deep well of wisdom within to awaken us to the expansive potential of Love.

How do we engage the liberating power of love in a world of ever-increasing uncertainty and complexity?

Take time to listen.
Choose to be open, curious and prepared to learn something new.
Live with intention, grounded in our values.
Engage Love as spiritual practice…

Love that invites us, to hold compassion and hope close,
Love that propels us forward, to do and be in new ways,
Love that calls us, to set each other free.

May it be so.

Daniel