it sets free a reservoir of love, an awareness of our interconnection, & an inherent capacity to be with life compassionately.
all which we will need in the times ahead.
so embrace your rawness, your open-heartedness & all it brings. it’s a super power, it’s what makes you fully human, & keeps you from becoming a monster.
please still live a life of principle in love. it is important, it still matters, perhaps more now than at any point within most of our lifetimes. make a vow & commit to it.
to my Black, Indigenous, Asian & beautifully diverse friends of color, i say, YOU BELONG HERE.
to my Latino friends & immigrant families, to all immigrants including those undocumented, i say, YOU BELONG HERE.
to my friends who belong to religious communities outside of alignment with Christian Nationalism or are not part of a religious community at all, i say, YOU BELONG HERE.
this is the ultimate view – our birthright is LOVE & no one can truly take that away from us. yet, on a relative level real harm can happen. marginalization exists, oppression exists, destruction exists. so the ultimate view is worth remembering in such times & it is worth standing up for & speaking up for. it is worthy of our unity & community building, so let’s look out for one another & recommit ourselves to love.
may all those opposed to such love, to the sacredness of all beings without exception, be blessed hard out of their ignorance, fear, & aggression, & into the grace & vastness of love.
i will not diminish the darkness of this moment. many of us are hurting & afraid of what may come, much of that due to what Trump & those around him have proclaimed & promised to do. the grief of this moment is justified & is not resolved with simple platitudes.
however, know this from my heart to yours – the light of love will not be extinguished, even as those who choose cruelty & destruction work hard to diminish its shine. history is filled with stories of the subtlety & resilience of love’s power within community to lift up, heal, & light a path through any darkness. perhaps this is how love succeeds, in the alchemy of our recognized interdependence, & the change impermanence promises.
as a Buddhist, a follower of Jesus’ teachings & mystics across traditions, i know my role is to choose love in the face of whatever comes, to embody fierce compassion in healing wounds, holding hands, breaking bread, breaking systems & structures of harm, opening hearts, & working to end suffering for all who suffer & all that is suffering in the world.
this will be my path, my practice, my work – to work on the side of love, to stand in solidarity with my fellow LGBTQIA+ family, with women, with the undocumented, the immigrant, the Indigenous, Black & POC communities, & all who may be targeted, marginalized, & oppressed. you are love embodied, sacred, & worthy of the fullness & joy of life.
love also speaks truth without fear or favor, so a warning in & with love to all who align with cruelty – all suffer under fascism, all tyrants fall in time, & we cannot serve two masters. choose love.
the light will not be extinguished. our light will not be extinguished.
whatever the results of today’s election, one thing is clear for me, the only path forward & through this fraught & liminal time is the Way of Love.
the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, said –
“For hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.” (Dhammapada vs. 5)
i feel so strongly about this that i had this text tattooed along with the image of the unalome (spiritual symbol representing the life journey & path to awakening) prior to this election. whatever is ahead, i want it to be crystal clear for myself as a reminder & to those who see it, that Love IS the Way.
may open hearts, calm-steady minds, and wisdom prevail on this day & all the days ahead.
unless there is an absolute blow out by one of the candidates (which is unexpected) today, we won’t likely know the results/winner of this election until tomorrow or even later in the week if the incoming results are close (which is expected). SO my friends, practice your breathing, having a calm steady mind, stay kind to yourself & those around you, & practice having patience as every vote is counted. WE WANT EVERY VOTE COUNTED. that is what democracy is. so if a certain candidate claims victory early (as he did in 2020) & calls to stop counting votes (as he did in 2020), see it for what it is & stay focused & support the electoral processes of our democracy.
in honor of and in the spirit of All Souls’ Day today, i would like to offer a prayer i wrote up this past year as a part of my daily/morning practice. the prayer/practice includes some lovingkindness phrases that i revised from the traditional phrases.
it should be our practice to open the borders of our hearts.
pay attention to what is said & who says it – the rhetoric & the language being used to sow division, to target & harm immigrants, the undocumented, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, political opponents, & those who speak truth to power. the language of harm & destruction, of marginalization & oppression, of division & despair, is not the path of love, it is not the teaching of the Buddha, it is not the way of Christ.
please do not allow your hearts to be indifferent to the rhetoric of hate & harm, violence & destruction. do not allow the harming of others to be normalized. open the borders of your heart.
The Metta Garden 