Connection

I've posted here before about my volunteer work through the Amma Foundation's Circle of Love, writing letters to women who are struggling with life's hardships. For the last two months, I've written once a week to two women about whom I know very little. I don't know their ages, their marital status, their race, their education... any of the things we take for granted that we know about people with whom we commune.

It's been an interesting process, and, as it turns out, a spiritual one. At first I focused on getting it right: a familiar scenario, even with friends I know well. When a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, or loses a parent or sibling (or, god forbid, a child) to death, my stomach wobbles and my heart clenches and I don't know what to say. I refuse to resort to platitudes, so I'm instead mute, distant.

It's that much harder when you commit yourself to offering words of support to people you've never met. How to write something meaningful without being preachy; how to acknowledge their struggles without making them think that's all I think they're about; how to share parts of myself and my life without making it too much about me. What is their religion? If I quote Buddha (my favorite philosopher, though I'm not Buddhist), will that be an affront?

Spirituality has long eluded me. I've met lots of people I think of as holy, and they strike me as mystical, meditative, wise, always saying just the right thing, shrouded in light that emanates off them, their bodies surrounded by angelic halos you can practically see. Not being that version of spiritual, I guessed that I simply wasn't at all. 

It occurred to me just this week that maybe my path is on the ground.  It's about connection. While I have never been and am still not quite sure there even is a god or spirit or higher power, I've certainly loved the idea that god or spirit is within each of us and that we are all one. I have moved often, changed jobs frequently, made friends easily, and written, and written, and written. In all these years, most people I meet have been willing to open up. Countless times I've heard people say, "I've never told anyone this before..." People trust me with secrets, and I've always thought this was wholly secular. But maybe not. Maybe the way I connect with people and share bits of my life as they share bits of theirs, the more peaceful and at ease we become together in this material world. 

In any event, I figured this out while writing my Circle of Love letters this week. For a moment, I felt some light emanating off of me. It could've been a hot flash - there's been a disconcerting increase in those lately - but this one, at least, I chose to think of as something slightly more profound.