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After saying “goodbye” in a sense to #Signs of Love in my last post, they came back with a vengeance. Since Valentine’s Day was coming up, I kind of expected to see a lot of hearts, but I didn’t expect to be given so much Love.

Publishing my last blog was scary for me. It made me feel weak and vulnerable, but I have learned that in those moments, I need to be brave and strong. Fear will keep me stuck; courage will set me free.

This was the extent of my planned expressions of Love for today.

My uber-romantic card for TIm. I really am a total geek and he loves me for it.
My uber-romantic card for TIm. I really am a total nerd.

Instead, this is what I got.

#Signs of Love surrounded me
#Signs of Love surrounded me

Since Wednesday, everywhere I went, every time I stopped, a #Sign was there to remind me that Love isn’t through with me yet.

photo 2

I am so glad.

I hope today is a good one for you, but if it isn’t looking that way, rest assured.

Love’s not through with you yet either.

#sign in the sand
#Sign in the sand

If you need a little more Love, go to my #Signs page here. There’s lots to look at!

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Dear Readers:

This month, my husband Tim is trying to support me in my endeavor to be more still, more present, more aware and more in love.

To that end, he offered to write a blog post for me. He’s offered in the past, in a half-joking way, but this time I actually took him up on it, much to his surprise and immediate consternation. However, he did it and I think he did it pretty darn well. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the musing of my better half.

First Time/ This Time

I am not a very cultured person. I spend far too much time watching sports and Seinfeld re-runs, and far too little time reading good books or poetry. There is not a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from NBA games or from Jerry, George, Elaine, & Kramer. So I’ll take it where I can get it, and I seem to get most of it from song lyrics and movies.

Which brings me to U2. Bono’s song lyrics are about as close as I get to reading poetry. I’m not sure where he’d rank amongst the all-time greats, like Robert Frost or E.E. Cummings , or any of the other famous poets that I’ve heard of but have never read, but it seems to me like he’s knows what he’s doing.

One of my favorite lines is from a song called “Vertigo.”

         a feeling so much

         stronger than a thought

Often, Bono’s words have a way of pulling me out of myself and opening me up, allowing something to sneak in through the side door and change my perspective.

Recently I was feeling like I was in a bit of a funk. I have been in one of those “glass half empty” modes for the past couple weeks, months, years, decades (who are we kidding?). I have recently come to accept that, unfortunately, this is my default setting. And although I am aware of my blessings (my wife, my kids, my health, my friends & extended family, my business… the list could go on & on) I spend much more time and energy focused on the things that aren’t quite “right” (the recession, finances, my kid’s behavior, my favorite team’s ineptitude, Homeland Season 3…). The list could go on & on.

I know I am blessed, but I don’t really feel it. And as Bono reminds me, a feeling is stronger than a thought.

This is my ongoing struggle: feeling what I know to be true. Because when I feel it, everything changes. Everything is… better.

“Vertigo’s” lyrics were ricocheting around inside my head when I was trying to find something to watch on TV the other night. As chance would have it (or maybe it’s a combination of divine intervention + the rapidly approaching holiday season), an oldie but a goodie was just starting: Love, Actually (a semi-cheesy, romantic comedy from the 90’s starring Hugh Grant and a bunch of other English people). I’d seen this movie when it came out, and a couple of times since, and always thought it was pretty decent: funny, clever, and sweet, with good looking actors and witty writing. What’s not to like?

The movie opens with montage of reunion scenes at Heathrow Airport, with a voice-over from Hugh Grant, one of the main characters:

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love, actually, is all around.”

Now I don’t want to mix metaphors here (or whatever you call it when you reference a different movie in the middle of your story which happens to be about another movie. Cue final scene of Jerry McGuire) but Hugh Grant had me at: “love, actually, is all around.”

With his opening line, he had me. “Love is all around,” I thought. “It’s everywhere.”

For the next couple hours, I re-watched this movie and found myself in tears for most of it. I’m not exactly sure why, as the movie isn’t particularly sad. I think it’s because I was opened up and I was seeing it from a different vantage point.

Sometimes, I think, the major themes in stories elude me the first time through, probably because I am too wrapped up in the plot and how things are resolved. But this time through, I think I finally picked up what the filmmakers were laying down. This time through, I noticed things I had never noticed before.

The first time I saw this movie, I noticed all of the “typical” love stories that were about romantic love. This time, I noticed all of the other kinds of love that were happening between all sorts of different humans.

There is love between siblings: Sarah, played by Laura Linney, chooses to love her brother, who lives in a mental institution, even though it costs her opportunities to pair up with the good looking dude from her office, and will undoubtedly cost her similar opportunities down the road. But she is committed to him and she prioritizes her decision to love him over her own desires. Ali and I often tell our kids there’s difference between love, the verb, and love, the emotion. The emotion fades in and out, and sometimes love is hard. And in those times when it’s hard, you have to choose it. Sarah chooses it, again and again and again.

  • The first time through, I noticed Sarah’s love for the hot dude from her office. This time through, I noticed her love for her brother.

There is love between a father and his step son: the father (Liam Neeson), whose wife has recently died, notices that his step son is acting strange, so he pulls himself out of his own sadness to try to help the boy. When it turns out that the boy claims to be in love with a girl at school, rather than laughing it off or telling the boy that love will only leave you heartbroken, he decides to help him get the girl. He participates in the love story of the boy, and won’t let him give up.

Near the end of the movie, when the girl is about to get on a plane back to America, he gives him one last push:

“Sam, you’ve got nothin’ to lose, and you’ll always regret it if you don’t! I never told your mom enough. I should have told her every day because she was perfect every day. You’ve seen the films, kiddo. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

The boy replies, with the most flawless line in the entire movie:

“Okay, Dad. Let’s do it. Let’s go get the shit kicked out of us by love.”

  • The first time through, I noticed the cute story about the boy’s puppy love. This time through, I noticed the father’s love.

There is love between friends: the creepy old singer realizes at the end of the movie that “the love of his life” turns out to be his chubby manager.

“And I realized that, as dire chance and… and… and fateful cockup would have it, here I am, mid-50s, and without knowing it I’ve gone and spent most of my adult life with a… with a chubby employee. And… and much as it grieves me to say it, it… it might be that the people I love is, in fact… you.”

He wasn’t coming out of the closet, he simply realized that it was Christmas, and it occurred to him that you are supposed to be with the people you love on Christmas, and the person he loved most in the world was his manager.

  • The first time through, I noticed the creepy old dude’s love for himself and his career comeback attempt. This time through, I noticed a sweet, older person having a life-altering epiphany.

Of course, there is also romantic love. Between the prime minister and his secretary. Between the sweet young couple that works on the adult movie set. Between the young, single English dude and the Midwestern American girls he meets on vacation. But my favorite love story in the movie is between the writer and the housekeeper.

The writer, played by Colin Firth, is English. When he goes to France to work on his book, he meets a Portuguese housekeeper who comes to clean his cottage every day. They do not speak the same language, and have a tough time communicating. But they slowly begin to fall in love.

It’s easy to see the story on the surface and jump to logical conclusions: boy meets her, girl is young & beautiful, girl is in maid’s costume, girl can’t nag boy because she doesn’t speak English…  therefore boy falls in love with girl.

On the flipside: girl meets boy, girl makes minimum wage as a housekeeper and comes from low-income background, boy is an awkward, lanky nerd, but is also very rich and seems like a nice guy…  therefore girl falls in love with boy.

But underneath the surface, I saw two people who couldn’t rely on words to communicate, so they had to find different ways. So they communicated with eye contact, and with gestures, and with kindnesses, and with their reactions to things that happened (like when the wind blows his entire manuscript into the lake and she jumps in to try to gather up all of the wet, ruined pages).

It occurred to me that their true selves were falling in love with each other, and that if they had been able to speak, the words would have only gotten in the way. Words have a tendency to do that sometimes.

  • The first time through, I noticed a typical “falling-in-love story,” the most typical of them all, where physical attraction kicks in and people are powerless to stop it. This time through, I noticed a pure love story, where two people’s souls were able to fall in love because words weren’t available to screw it up.

By the time the credits started to roll at the end of the movie, I felt different. I was in love. In love with my wife. In love with my kids. In love with my friends, and my family, I was in love with pretty much everybody. And I was feeling it, not just thinking it. And I think I remember hearing somewhere that feelings are stronger than thoughts.

How long will this feeling last? I don’t know, but I assume it will fade, and my default setting will be restored. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy this feeling, enjoy that my glass is, not only half full, but overflowing.

Like I said at the beginning, I’m not very cultured. My life lessons are delivered via pop music and cheesy rom-coms. I should have also mentioned that I’m not very smart. I had to see this movie four or five times before the light bulb went on. But at least it finally went on. Love is, actually, all around us. All we have to do is notice it, choose it, participate in it, and be changed by it.

Thank you, Bono. I love you, man!

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Pope Frances I

Like most of the world last spring, I watched in fascination as Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope. The first day, I was non-plussed. Another old, white guy? Big surprise. The second day, I began to take notice: he was a Jesuit and he chose the name Francis, the first Pope ever to do so. The third day, I got a little discouraged as Catholic pundits and news organizations across the nation scrambled to prop up his conservative credentials and hard line stances. But as the week unfolded, I heard the stories of how he paid his own bills, carried his own bags and rode in a modest sedan across town and my heart melted a little bit. Then came his ordination and in one Pope Disabled mansimple gesture, stopping to cradle a disabled man in his arms, he captured my imagination. I was willing to entertain the possibility that he just might be a different kind of Pope.

Reading the full interview from America Magazine confirmed it. Yesterday, my Facebook feed was abuzz with quotes, excerpts and articles about the interview, but it wasn’t until this morning when I read it for myself that I understood the import of what he had to say. I know journalists and news organizations need the juicy bits, and so focused on his words about homosexuality, abortion, divorce and birth control. Those issues concern me too, but I wanted to know the context. Did he really mean it that way? Did he follow up his compassionate comments with an even stronger emphasis on obedience to the Church, its hierarchy and doctrine?

He did not.

Not once.

Instead, Pope Francis offered an avalanche of Love, a deluge of Compassion, a flight of Hope. What I found most striking as I read the article was the consistency of his theme, no matter how far-ranging the topic. It was simply this:

You are Loved.

That is the bottom line, according to Pope Francis and when you are loved, you are forgiven and you are cherished. Your presence and company are desired. The Church is “not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” rather “it is the home of all.” He takes it a step further, strengthening a connection, which has become frayed and worn in recent years. He seems to say to each of us, “You belong to God and as such, you belong to God’s Church. As Christ’s servants on earth, you are our beloved and we must do a better job of treating you as such.”  He calls on the members of the church, particularly the clergy, to focus on the “proclamation of the saving love of God” before all else.

A few minutes after I finished the interview, I received an email from my brother, a soft-spoken, easy-going man and a practicing Catholic. This is what he wrote:

“This article almost brought me to tears…I LOVE OUR POPE. This pope can help this church heal wounds with love. He will open the doors to the church to people who have felt excluded. He will inspire the members to LOVE.

I believe he is exactly what the church needs at this time. 

I’m excited to be led by a guy who ‘gets it.’ The teachings of Christ were about loving one another not about following all the rules.

(Is it okay to refer to the pope as a guy? I think he would be okay with it!)”

And I laughed, because those were my very thoughts. Pope Francis “gets it.”

He knows compassion and mercy must come before discipline and correction. He wants to see church ministers behave “like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor,” instead of simply saying, “Get up and walk” – on the straight and narrow path.

As another theologian I know puts it, “Love wins” and Pope Francis may just have won my heart, by being so open, vulnerable, and humble, unafraid of mystery and content to go where God leads him. I like that in a guy.

He may not be the man of my dreams, but he’s allowed me to dream of a new direction and a new future for the Church.

If you haven’t read the full interview, it is well worth the time and can be found here.

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Fruitvale

Thomas Merton famously describes a mystical experience he had on a street corner in Louisville, KY on a normal weekday afternoon. Seemingly out of nowhere, he suddenly felt his absolute connection to every human being around him. He writes,

 In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.” …They are not “they” but my own self. There are no strangers! Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.

In other words, his heart broke open and what poured out was Love. There were no separation between himself and The Other. They were all one and it was the closest he had come to experiencing the face of God.

As many of you know through previous blogs (Remember “Working Out My Heart”?), I tend to keep my heart under lock and key. I am not prone to Merton-esque revelations. My conscious mind is a far safer vantage point from which to view life’s experiences, so when Tim invited me to go see the newly-released Fruitvale Station last night, I thought that was the perspective from which I would see it: my logical mind, my heart under wraps. It was about a subject with which I have no experience and only vaguely remembered from the papers a few years back.  I thought it would be a perfect film for my head to be educated while my heart remained safe. I was wrong.

Fruitvale Station broke my heart open.

It found the key and threw the doors open wide. What poured out was not guilt, or shame, or anger. What poured out was Love and so I had to remain in the darkened movie theater long after the movie ended, the credits rolled and the lights came up. I had to remain until I could walk out and not fall down and worship someone.

I don’t write movie reviews and I won’t try to describe how, or why it affected me so deeply. It would sound foolish and give you all sorts of unreasonable expectations about the film, but I will ask you to go. Go for your mind; go for your heart. Learn what happened to Oscar Grant III, a young man with a good heart and a bad temper, that fateful New Year’s Day, 2009.

In my writing classes, my students’ first assignment is a personal narrative. They often roll their eyes, thinking of it as juvenile work, something they did in 3rd grade, but this is what I tell them. You can’t write what you don’t know well and what most of us know well is our own lives. But more importantly, I tell them, is this: we are a storytelling people. From the beginning of time, it is how we, as human beings, have made sense of our lives and our world.  We may tell other people our stories, but the stories we tell ourselves are the ones that really matter. They are the ones that tend to separate us, that make us right and others wrong, that prop up our prejudices and beliefs and reinforce our own worldview. When exposed to a new set of circumstances, or facts, we can either reject them outright, or adapt the stories we tell ourselves to account for the new information.

The only way our stories change is through experience and since we can’t experience everything, we have to rely on other people to help us along. Telling a story, I remind my students, is a privilege, because it is an opportunity to change how someone else tells their own. A good story changes the protagonist, but a great one changes everyone.

Help me along, I ask them.

Tell me something true.

Tell me something that matters.

Change me.

Fruitvale Station does just that.

It gets an A in my book.

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Goat Rodeo: about the most polite term used by aviation people (and others in higher risk situations) to describe a scenario that requires about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it. http://www.urbandictionary.com

Most mornings with Kiko feel like I’m at a Goat Rodeo. Today was no exception and unfortunately, no one walked away from it completely unscathed. She stormed out of the house to wait in the misty rain for her carpool; I went to check my computer. This is what I saw on Facebook:

Oh, if I had only known! But wait a minute. I did know. Though I hadn’t seen her midnight post (I go to bed around ten), I could tell from the moment she woke up that today was not a good day. It was her father who didn’t know and who brought this morning to such an unhappy conclusion.

Kiko has never been a morning person; adolescence has done nothing to improve the situation. The challenging curriculum at her all-girls prep school has only made it worse. She does homework until eleven or so and then takes an hour or two to unwind. Her alarm goes off (for the first of several times) at 6:30 AM.

Though I am a morning person, I’ve learned to adjust my expectations. I speak to her minimally. I am helpful when possible. I appreciate her good mornings, using those days to sneak in an extra hug, or kiss and chat about life. On bad days, I avoid her. I pack her lunch, pat her on the head and try to never, under any circumstances, overreact to her snide comments, deep sighs and tragicomical complaints.

Tim has no such compunction. I don’t know what got into him this morning, but as Keara lay on the couch, soaking up her last moments in a horizontal position before the incessant verticality of her day, he would not leave her alone. As the youngest child in his family, his internal switch is permanently set to “tease.” As the father in this home, he has a reasonable expectation for respect and response. While neither of these things are bad in and of themselves, (I appreciate them most of the time), they are not great in combination with an overly tired, teenage girl. I didn’t hear the details of their exchange, but he made one crack after another, which she either ignored, or “cracked” back, until she stormed out of the house.

Exasperated, I looked at him and he said, “I don’t know how you don’t engage when she is acting like that.” I started straightening couch cushions. “Don’t you think she’s being unreasonable?” I folded throw blankets. “Seriously, when someone is being such a donkey, how do you not try to get them to stop?” I began to rearrange the trinkets on the entryway table. He finally got it. “Oh, you do it just like you are doing it to me right now,” he said as he turned and stalked up the stairs.

Ugh. He caught me and I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I was frustrated at him for messing with Kiko, but I didn’t have to ignore him as if he were a cranky, petulant teen. I could have engaged in conversation with him about his concerns. I could have empathized with his pain and his desire to connect with her. I could have recognized that he only wanted to be a good dad, to make her laugh, to start her day on a better note.

But instead of acknowledging any of that, I was smug and if there is one thing I hate being, that’s it. Cathleen Falsani wrote one of my favorite blogs of 2012, called “Deliver Us From Smugness.” If you have time, you should read the whole thing, but one line in particular has stayed with me on an almost daily basis. She writes,

“The opposite of love is smug.”

She goes on to explain that “To be smug is to be excessively proud of your achievements and successes. Conceited. Arrogant. Complacently self-satisfied.”

This morning I was smug with the man I love. I was excessively proud of how I wrangle the Goat Rodeo that is Kiko and her morning routine, instead of humbly grateful that I have crashed and burned enough times to know when and how to walk away.

So Tim, I hope you’ll forgive my smugness. It is the opposite of Love and Love is the one thing I want to be, every day, in every way possible.

 

As per our family agreement, this blog was read and approved by both parties involved in this morning’s Goat Rodeo. 

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I’ve sat down to write this blog many times over the last weeks. I still don’t know if I’ll get it right, or not, but I thought I’d try again.  I’ve been struggling with writer’s block lately. Half-formed ideas haunt me, but the words won’t come. I’ve been hard pressed to complete a single thought, much less string together a series of intelligent ones. There have been saving graces – an episode of Project Runway, the death of a beloved author, a strange request from my husband – but those happy (?) accidents seems to have slowed.

Last week I thought I had finally created that perfect writing storm in the midst of my busy summer day: a few hours alone in my cool, quiet house, my work completed, the chores done. There was nothing to distract me. Surely, I would be able to write now. But I couldn’t focus. I fidgeted; I got up and down; I checked email; I about to jump out of my skin. Ultimately, I knew what I needed to do. Despite the 100-degree heat, I went out on a walk to reacquaint my head with my heart and soul. When my head is in charge, there are things my heart finds it impossible to say.

By the time, I got to the end of my street, the truth had already bubbled up to the surface and I was able to admit what had been bothering me. In hindsight, it seems obvious, but sometimes it’s difficult to see what’s right in front of us.

For the past several months, I have been writing about Love: the power of love, the joy of love, the signs of Love – all the things that keep me going, but what I haven’t written about is the shadow side of Love.

Fear.

I have been trying (with some success) to keep things positive. There is nothing wrong with ‘positivity,’ except when I use it to mask other truths. If “perfect love casts out all fear” as Bono and the Bible like to say, why mess around with anything else? The Love I have been writing about is that perfect Love. If I know that Love, as I have been claiming to, then it shouldn’t leave room for anything else in my life.

Except that it does. There is plenty of room for the flip side of love. My fears are still here. I am utterly and completely human, so even perfect Love has to go through my filter. I process it imperfectly and end up with something infinitely less than I began with. Somehow, I fooled myself into believing that this perfect, cosmic Love would leave me fearless. I discovered on my walk that it hasn’t, which is why I found myself sitting at the end of my street in the middle of the afternoon, crying my eyes out.

Quite simply, I’m afraid.

Andy Rooney once said, “A writer’s job is to tell the truth” and as I sat there, I realized that I can’t write, because I’m not telling the truth. I’m telling some of the truth – the truth about Love and what it can do. I’ve been holding something back too – the truth about what happens when Love doesn’t win, because let’s face it, sometimes our humanity simply won’t let it. Bono never mentioned that our fears could cast out that perfect Love as well. I kind of wish he would have warned me.

We embrace our fears just as often, if not more so, than we accept the Love that is available to us. It doesn’t mean that Love gives up, or that Love isn’t there. It just means that fear has the upper hand for a while. Fear doesn’t give up either. My life is a dance between Love and fear. Love has been on center-stage and fear wants to have it’s day too.

So for the sake of transparency and to get over my writer’s block, I thought I would share some of my fears with you.  It’s a short list. I only included three of the biggies.

I am afraid of growing old.

I am afraid of the unknown.

I am afraid of failing God in some critical way.

There they are.

Whew.

No, wait, not whew.

More like Aaaahhh! What did I just do?

I thought I would feel better, laying them all out there, but I don’t, not really. Unlike Love, fear doesn’t bring freedom. Basking in fear diminishes us and the possibilities for our lives, but maybe you already knew that. Deep down, I know it too, but sometimes fear just gets the upper hand.

My dear friend Joyce said to me recently, “Don’t make a decision based on fear. What would you do if you were fearless?” Maybe her question is just another way of asking, “What would you do if you were in Love?”

What would you do if you were in Love and it made you fearless?

I don’t think I can answer that question today. Fear is hogging the dance floor. However, Love is waiting  patiently in the wings. She knows her turn will come again soon and I know she will leave me breathless with beauty and wonder. Personally, I can’t wait for our song to come on. Fear is not my favorite partner.

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Dear Readers,

Don’t worry! It’s still me, still Ali! Still writing, and hoping that you are still reading!

Yes, my blog has a new look and a new name, but in all the important ways, it’s the same old story.

I read something, hear something, see something, or feel something and it turns my world upside down just a little bit and I immediately think, I have to write this down. And so many of you generously take the time to read it. Thank you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.

I decided to rename my blog #Signs of Love to reflect my growing understanding that Love is everywhere. Eight months ago when I started to write these stories, I didn’t know that, not the way I know it now.

I knew that Love could be anywhere, in theory. I knew for a fact that Love lived in my heart, in my home, in my relationship with Tim and the kids, my family and friends. I knew that Love was found in hugs and kisses, laughter and loyalty, and sometimes even in loss, pain and tears.

The rest of it, I took on faith. I had been taught well that God is Love, but when I look at where I thought Love lived and what I thought it looked like, it was a pretty limited image of the Divine Spirit. Love looked like a Happy Days rerun.

Alas, even the best shows have to end someday and so did my personal fantasy of Love. Don’t get me wrong; I still get to watch it in syndication every day. My home is still full of Love and so is my life, but I’ve also expanded my viewing repertoire.

A few months ago, I shared the story of the first Sign of Love I saw, written in the stone beneath my feet. You can check it out here, if you forgot what it looked like.

When I wrote about my friend M, I shared a few more Signs of Love that I had found on my early morning walks.

Just last week, while meditating in the canyon, I saw another Sign of Love, reminding me that in Love, we are always enough.

But those are just a few of the Signs of Love that I see on an almost daily basis. They really are everywhere and almost every one of them has a story.

 

This one showed up when I consciously asked Jesus to join me on my morning walk. Yes, it was a little awkward, but I thought he would surely be better company than my “friend” Patty.

 

 

This one showed up when I thought of my friend who has cancer, the one I wrote about in “This Isn’t Hard.” I prayed extra hard for her to feel Love that day. Her heart looked a little skimpy.

 

 

This one was in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s after a disastrous trip to the market. I was stomping out of there, late and huffy and there it was. How can I stay mad when a Sign of Love literally shows up at my feet in the cracks of parking lot sealant?

 

No matter where I turn these days, Love is there.

I think God is trying to teach me to let go of my preconceived notions of what Love looks like and how it behaves. I think God is trying to teach me that even when I am not “in Love,” It’s still there. I think God is trying to teach me that even when I am convinced that Love has abandoned me, that Love is not living up to Love’s side of the bargain, I am wrong.

Signs of Love are everywhere.

Or maybe, as Tim has suggested, I’ve just gotten in touch with my inner-hippie, and that if I don’t stop this nonsense soon, I will lose all credibility as a thinker and writer. I’ll simply be lost in my own cosmic world.

But I hope you’ll stick with me. I promise I won’t be posting all the Signs of Love that I see, but if you see any, I hope you’ll share them with me. That’s what the # sign is for at the start of the blog. You can put post them on Twitter, using #signsoflove and I will see them. Put them in a comment, or friend me on Facebook and show me there.

Your Signs of Love don’t even have to be in nature – I’d just love to know where you find Love when you aren’t really looking. I am coming to see that sometimes, it really is the best place.

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I had quite a few friends and readers wondering how my Mother’s Day turned out, so I thought I’d write a follow up post to let you know – not only what I got, but also what I learned.

First, let me say that I had a wonderful Mother’s Day. My family did a beautiful job of making me feel loved and appreciated. I didn’t get my ‘latte,’ but I did get a trip to Pipes Café in Cardiff with my kids in tow, which was even better. Here are the pictures of the best faces they could give me. (Finn was trying to be funny, though he didn’t quite pull it off.)

Mother’s Day breakfast at Pipes, 2012

I also received a new set of ear buds for my cell phone, so I can drive hands-free, as well as a Brixton fedora to keep the sun off my face. “Killer,” I thought, “They must love me if they want to save me from tickets, and melanoma!” I also received two handmade cards and a hand painted flowerpot. I have to admit, I was wrong. Handprints are still totally cute! Well, fingerprints are anyway. See for yourself.

"Hand-made" butterflies, caterpillars and butterflies, oh my!

The flowerpot was just the beginning of Molly’s gift. Tim calls her “The Ringer.” As long as Molly’s around, my Mother’s Day (or birthday, or Christmas) is going to be just fine. She made me a card, calling me The Best Spirital (sic)Writer Ever and quoting some of my own work back to me. She also brought me home a piece of coral that she had found at the beach to add to my nature collection of rocks and sticks from my canyon walks. Molly said it reminded her of me, because of all the holes. Apparently I “fill up all the holes in her heart with kindness.” Are you kidding me? She’s totally got my number. Thank goodness I hadn’t put on my make-up yet.

Molly's metaphor

Finn, “The Artist,” made me a card in his own unique style. His thoughtful gift, which some might think irreverent, was a perfect combination of what I love and what he loves to do. It too was added to my bedside table.

Finally, Keara, “The Silent One,” wrapped my ear buds in pink tissue paper with a white bow and handed it to me on our way out the door. Despite reading my last post, it was the best she could do. That’s okay. Deep down, I know she loves me.

Tim, as always, stepped up and told me how much he loves and appreciates me.

All in all, it was a pretty special day and I learned something too.

Glennon Melton, who I adore, had this to say about Mother’s Day. It was too late to take back my words, but that’s okay. I don’t think what I said was untrue, just maybe not broad enough in it’s perspective. On her Momastery blog, Glennon wrote,

I want to try to explain my evolving definition of the word Mother. I am starting to understand that the word works better for me as a verb than a noun. Mothering is a choice we make, like loving is a choice.  We do not need to have given birth or to have signed adoption papers to Mother. To Mother, to me, means to nurture. To heal, to help grow, to give. And so anyone and everyone who is involved in the healing of the world is a Mother.  Anyone who tends to a child, or friend, or stranger, or animal or garden is a Mother. Anyone who tends to Life is a Mother. Tomorrow is a celebration of all the healers and hopers and lovers and givers and tend-ers.  In other words- tomorrow is for every single one of you.

So I hope that yesterday, you mothered and were mothered. I hope you not only loved and healed and gave, but were also loved and tended and received. I hope you laughed and cried, because all of life is a celebration.

Happy Mother’s Day – every day – and thanks for reading.

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In honor of my mother, who deserves a tribute today, but gets this blog instead.

My friend T and I were discussing Mother’s Day traditions last night – what we were doing on Sunday, what our kids, or husbands had planned, what we hoped for. We were definitely on the same page. We don’t need them to do something big; we don’t need them to do something fancy. We just need them to do something.

I definitely have friends who take the martyr approach, who are of the “It’s no big deal” variety – moms who are happy to overlook a lack of effort, sincerity, time, or money spent. I am not one of them, and as a result, there have been some rocky Mother’s Days around our home.

Before that second Sunday in May, I’d like to my kids know that:

You know, there is such a thing as gratitude. There is such a thing as acknowledging the fact that each and every day, I serve you. I cook for you, clean for you, drive for you. I entertain you, love you, tuck you in at night, take care of you when you are sick, celebrate your accomplishments and mourn your defeats. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE doing this and I love you. I will continue to do this, whether or not I get anything special on Mother’s Day, Christmas, or my birthday. I will tell myself that deep down, you really do appreciate me and deep down, I really do believe it’s true.

However, I think Mother’s Day is a nice opportunity for my husband to reinforce the messages we try to teach our kids all year long: the art of acknowledgement, the joy of gift-giving, the impact of making an effort.

When they were all in elementary school, he had it easier. The teachers would help the kids make little balls of crepe paper flowers, signs of love, or traced handprints with poems written to melt a mama’s heart. Those were the good old days. I’ve only got the baby left I that demographic, and even her handprints aren’t that cute any more.

So now the onus is all on Tim. Somehow, he has to inspire the troops to really love on their mom. How will it turn out this year? It’s questionable – because they’re growing up and bought into the hype that it’s no big deal, that Mother’s Day is just another Hallmark holiday, that a hug and a kiss and a mumbled “Happy Mother’s Day” is good enough.

Sorry mister, it’s really not.

I’d like Tim to know that:

I know you are busy. I know the kids are lukewarm about shopping. I know you detest it. But I’d really like to get something from someplace other than Hallmark, Rite Aid and Starbucks, the three shops in a row at the strip mall a mile away from our home. I like to think my perfect Mother’s Day is pretty easy. A morning latte and blueberry scone, a trip to the beach, a plate of buffalo wings and a pitcher of dark beer for dinner, while we watch an NBA playoff game. You’ve said before that my Mother’s Day is a surfing man’s dream.

Tim might like to remind me at this point that I am not all that easy. That I forgot about wanting to go to church as a family, which always involves arguments about showers, clothing and shoe-choices. G**- Forbid, Molly has to wear something besides her slip-on, checkered Vans with a hole in the toe. Since it’s Mother’s Day, he has to do all the arguing. He might also mention that my morning latte is actually a “grande, two-pump, extra-hot, non-fat, vanilla latte,” which he can never order right since he only gets it for me once a year, and then despite his effort and embarrassment at ordering such a ridiculous thing, he has to see me be almost satisfied, instead of completely so. Finally, he doesn’t like dark beer, or buffalo wings, but I order them and he eats them, because after all, it is Mother’s Day. 

Now, if anyone is getting defensive on my poor family’s behalf, let me just say again that a gift doesn’t need to be big. It doesn’t need to be expensive. It doesn’t even have to be a bouquet of over-priced flowers. It just needs to speak my love language, which means it needs to come from the heart. And if their hearts are blank, if they come up empty when it comes to me, well then, that’s a story for another day. But I am going to pretend like that’s not the case. I am going to hope that they just need a little bit of encouragement to dig deep, take some time and put down on paper a little bit of mom-love. Is that too much to ask? Colored markers speak volumes.

Tim might also like to jump in here and point out that for his birthday last week I failed miserably at this very challenge. Only two out of three of our kids mustered up the energy to make him a birthday card and his gifts consisted of two gift cards from that same strip mall I was just complaining about.

In my defense, he always says we don’t need to get him anything. I never say that! But okay, I’m humbled, but that’s not the point. The point is the ideal we are shooting for here people!

So what do you think, moms? Is Mother’s Day a big deal, or not? Does your family step up, or is it just another Hallmark-holiday to you? And what do you do to honor your mom, and your mother-in-law, and your sisters and all the other mothers you know and love and your own role in your family all in the same day?

P.S. As I finished writing, I looked up and saw this. It was my one of my best Mother’s Day presents ever. I actually have it hanging next to my bed to help me remember who I am.

Molly's Mother's Day Creation

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Occasionally on my morning walks I run into my friend M.  We tend meet at the same place every time, at the top of a very long hill, finishing up our “work out” routines. I’ve walked; she’s run. I’m about to go down; she’s made her way up.

Usually, I’ve just come out of the canyon wearing my Ugg boots and beanie with an empty coffee cup in my hand. My heart rate probably hasn’t surpassed 90 bpm. In contrast, she’s just run several miles up and down the hills of our neighborhood and stands there – a 6 foot tall, glistening, blonde goddess.

It’s lovely to see her, to give good mornings smiles and high fives, but sometimes, I sigh as I continue to walk down the hill. She’s just so beautiful, and fast, and disciplined, with her boys and her husband, her job, her schooling, and her fitness. Whew! I know she would never want me to feel that way, but sometimes, I just can’t help it.

But most of the time, I know this is true: if I didn’t go slow. I wouldn’t see this.

Rock 1 Or this.

Rock 2

Or this.

Rock 3

And if I didn’t see those things, I wouldn’t be be able to share them with M on Facebook, or a text message, or on my blog.

And if I didn’t tell M about them, she might not see those things.

And if she didn’t see those things, she wouldn’t be able to say nice things like this.

“Wow Ali you are awesome!!! Thanks for the reminder. I don’t think I tell you enough what a blessing it has been to read your blogs.”

And this.

“I love your writing. I hope your book will get written soon. I’ll be first in line to buy it:)”

And if she didn’t say things like that, then I might not see things like this:

It’s okay to go slow.

To find Presence takes a certain kind of discipline as well.

That in our weakness, others find strength.

Everyone has their own path and their own gift, their own way of finding meaning in their lives. And the best we can do is share those gifts with one another and say thank you when they are shared.

Thank you, M, for making my day.

For some reason, this was my theme song as I walked in the canyon today.

Enjoy!