The Biggest Muscle

My heart is big enough to encompass the joy and sorrow both. Disappointment, suffering, mentally created anguish over imagined events, wrongful assumptions and getting all worked up when there's just no cause. I'm learning to breathe into the many waves of life's emotions, to accept each new bout with grace or disaster as my equal friend and my hard wrought lessons. Not one to be amiss for long, I tend to create what I want while life keeps handing me what I need.

Recently a friend said, "God doesn't always give you the person, place, the thing you want. but always, instead, you get what you need." Starting to sound like an old Stones song. I guess psychedelics can bring on the same realizations as winging through life with open eyes and an ever larger, more accepting heart. The shortcut, drug induced, or sped up by the rock and roll lifestyle, is hardly preferable to the full on non-stop adventure in the heart, mind, and soul that is this woman's life. But I really liked what I thought she meant, religious overtones aside (she's a bit of a zealot, truth be told). Still, I wouldn't trade this funny life of mine for the moon. My heart, the biggest muscle I can fathom, grows huger every day as I keep, as Adrianne Rich said, "diving into the wreck" only to discover that I've been (and persist in being, sometimes still) the biggest obstacle to my own peace. So as I learn, at a snail's pace, to expand my big, boundless muscle, I notice joys piling up beside the sorrows, making my life a series of mountains, valleys, rivers and lakes. All full of potential for beauty and all capable of guiding me deeper into the riches of simple, unequivocal joy. Mining for spirit, churning up the crud and the diamonds together, I flex my heart muscle to include everything and everyone. Even those who don't understand, who disappoint, who can't give what I hope for, who serve to help me lose my way-- giving me the gift of those dark times, where I can encounter the truest parts of myself. I keep on going, not giving up, just encompassing it all in the myriad chapters that are writing the book called "Stacy". And sure, there are little chapters with captions that say things like, "Childhood: Light and Dark," "Iowa: Helpless (Neil Young)" OlyWA," "China," "New York: The Jason Years" " Tim # 1, 2 and 3," "Diego--Light of My Life," "Philadelphia," "Chicago Redux: You Never Thought it Could Happen to You Twice" and now, "Dreaming of the Next Great Adventure While I Hang Out in Purgatory". My life has been incredibly tied to my own experience. Whose isn't? It's just that I am starting to realize, these things are supremely personal and at once universal--your book is titled with your moniker and your chapters are all about you, but aren't we sharing the same human experience? Don't our hearts beat much like everyone else's? Can you find a home with a mustard seed who has never lost someone they love? http://hubpages.com/hub/buddhistblog

Expanding out this way, my life becomes more akin to those ripples in the ocean that enfold every creature and every motion of the universe we share. Of course, I want things to be a certain way, to turn out like such and such, to be what I want when I want it or--what? I'll have a meltdown, like Diego this morning? Possibly. I'll never be free from desire. Still, I am learning to accept the teachers, the places, the unfolding of all life's mysteries as a magic; as lovely as the emergence of a butterfly whose tiny flapping wings are somehow a part of something as huge as a typhoon. Like that fluttering wingspan, I am hitting these keys, making my waves, flapping my little wings. Better yet, I'm stretching that sore, tired, yet never giving up muscle as big as it can go to take the whole of my life inside of it-- along with yours, and everyone else's--to bless us all with peace.

Peace is possible, my friends. We are making it, slow as the slug that leaves a slippery trail. Stretch that muscle that ain't let you down yet. I love each and every one of you, whether you believe me or not. But most of all, I am learning that I need to love this big, rubber band that keeps thrumming along, snapping a beat inside my watery chest. It's a lovely sound, that heartsong. And it's mine, yours, and all of ours who are lucky enough to draw breath on this lovely, live host of ours that graces us with each everlasting moment.