Following love

When we follow love we find ourselves. Following loves tell you how to spend your time , who to call, what to do next. It is the star in the sky, a guide both gentle and strong.

And so it is important to know what we love so we recognize the call or the whisper or the little wind that is blowing us in a certain direction. I think of how love has lead me in my life, to stay here in Amherst for over forty years because I loved a man who loved me back. And so you build a life in an old old house on the side of the road on the edge of a town. And your doors are open to the lives around you. And you have neighbours that chop their wood every fall for thirty years and you love them for the presence, their consistency, the steady whizzzz of their saw in September that tells you "I am home."

And you love the tender stalks that shoot up every spring, the scent of lavender and sage by the door in the fall, and the way the snow settles in the wind against the barn door in the winter. 

And in November you hang the wreaths and light the yard up with warm celebration. You fend off the darkness with light by stringing bulbs on trees like it is a sacrament, for it is in a way, it is an act of preparation and hope. It is a belief that small joys matter and we must let light reign whenever we can.

And you hear the car that drives by every morning at five thirty while you lay in the dark to read and you wonder who they are and where they go so early because they unknowingly are part of the rhythm of your day. The first engine you hear in the morning before you tend the wood fire. And that fire comes to life with birch bark from your friends woodlot. He brought you boxes of it to feed your hearth easily and quickly in the morning. An act of love. One spark on the curly white bark and the fire is lit again without even a match. One spark lights another.

Fire is waiting to be fed. Like love is waiting to follow what the heart sings to it. We must listen to the hum of our heart. My own heart is singing all the time. Sometimes it is a lament, sometimes it is a gentle melody, and sometimes it's rock and roll. I can hear it because I know the music exists in me.

And so I write this morning before I even go to the wood stove, before I start the day. I turn on the little lamp beside my writing chair and I tap tap tap letters together into words that make sentences and in those words I write out who I am. I learn what I think, what I know, and what I wonder. I learn that the little I know is constantly changing because my heart beats and my love follows a wild path through bramble, fields, and woods and still comes out home when I pay attention to my own hum.

Your own hum. 

Your own rhythm.

What do you love?

What are you following?

Me, I have itchy hands that want to dance with a hook and make some wonder. I have a needy heart that wants to reach out and tend to others who struggle because I believe we all struggle sometimes, myself included, and sometimes as I ride the waves of joy and sorrow I need a hand. Sometimes I need to be the hand. 

And sometimes I follow the words on the page. Quick scratches of ink across the lines of an old journal it seems I will never fill. Private thoughts that I read over, years later, and remember that time in the dark or the light when I needed to pour out a story to my friend the page, because she would listen and never utter a word to a living soul. Because sometimes what I write is only true for the instant I am writing it. By the time I put down the pen I know better, know more and love begins to carry me again.

And these things I do, they are my life. Loving others and being there for them, making rugs, writing letters to myself and to you are things I do from love and for love. I follow love whenever I can.