The Love You Make

Heading into the Season of Love, I had an epiphany during our weekly prayer on the subject of love. During my meditation, I recalled a line from the song The End by the Beatles.

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

I have often wrestled with the meaning of this line. I equated it somehow with the kind of sacrifice and service for which Mother Teresa is so renowned. She said,  “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” But of course, we can’t all be Mother Teresa, and few of us are gifted with her capacity for service.

In my meditation, I asked the question, if it is not just about service, what is the larger meaning? What, in fact, have I “loved” in my life?

As sometimes happens in our weekly prayer, as soon as I asked the question in the silence, thoughts came tumbling out of the spiritual wellspring inside.

I love the beauty of this earth. The sunlight on the glistening waters of Lake Erie. Long walks in the Rocky River Valley, especially in autumn. Standing at the foot of a tumbling water fall at Tinkers Creek.

I have loved family intensely, parents and siblings; grandparents, aunts and uncles; 40 cousins, one husband, two children (plus their friends and significant others), and three grandchildren. I have loved friends, neighbors and coworkers.

I love the wisdom, creativity and vision of so many people, from the insights shared at Centering Space, to the ideas of great authors. From the magnificence of the statue of David in Florence to the painting of a mermaid created by my 6-year-old granddaughter. From Maya Lin who designed the Viet Nam Memorial to Beth who designed my kitchen renovation. I have loved people who made me cry with their stories of pain and suffering and comedians who made me laugh until I cried.

Most of all, I love the goodness of humanity and the thousand little incidents of kindness and generosity that I have been blessed to witness.

This was my epiphany: I always thought love was a “doing.” But I realized in that meditation that Love is a “being” – a BEING in love with my entire life and everything connected to it, even with my own skills, talents and gifts; with my own issues, failures and problems; with my own joys and accomplishments.

I have hated only one thing and that was the thing I feared – my own inadequacy at living.

But what if that imagined inadequacy was a myth of my own making? What if the only thing I was ever called to was to love my life? Exactly as it is. Exactly where I stand.

And, as that evening’s prayer reminded me, I need only to “engage in life” with love, to “give myself up to whatever happens” with love, and quit worrying about the “doing,” letting it all unfold as it will – a beautiful tapestry designed by Love itself.

~ Syndie Eardly