Category Archives: love

You Can Have This Heart to Break

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💔 Broken Heart Emoji – Meaning, Pictures, Codes

Billy Joel is part of my life soundtrack. He eloquently expresses my joy and suffering like no other artist.

I’ve recently been listening to his album, The Essential Billy Joel, and the song that most resonates with me at this time is: And So It Goes. The title reminds me of my favorite writer, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Joel’s lyrics hit me right in the heart.

Yes, sometimes life sucks but there are still good memories to keep us going. Perhaps the music video below will bring back some good memories for you.

Billy Joel – And So It Goes (Official Video)

Billy Joel – And So It Goes (Official Video) – YouTube

Be Right or Be in Relationship?

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Some marriage counselors like to ask their clients, “Do you want to be right or in relationship?” This Socratic method approach suggests that “being right” may be more difficult and lonelier than you might initially think. In addition, being in relationship may not always include being “right.”

Below are two references that have crossed my desk today. The first is a is a Tricycle article on Zen Ethics which includes a second reference, the poem, “A Place Where We Are Right,” by the Israeli poet Yehudi Amichai.

May you find one or more of these words of wisdom helpful in your daily discernment.

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An Ear to the Ground

“A Place Where We Are Right,” a poem by the Israeli poet Yehudi Amichai, shows this consequence perfectly:

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

(from The Selected Poetry of Yehudi Amichai, translation by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell, University of California Press, 1996, used with permission of the translators)

Bearded Man On A Bus – New Book Recommendation

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http://www.amazon.com/Bearded-Man-Bus-Immigrants-Privilege/

A friend and Buddhist mentor, Daniel L. Smith, has written a new book: Bearded Man On A Bus and it’s the perfect book for me right now as I live out my new life as a recovering romantic. His book is filled with wandering wisdom and gave me some fresh insights for my life journey. Specifically:

  • “Trailways red and white – and – lost all over” p.9
  • “Backwoods Alabama – born here, raised here, still feels she doesn’t belong.” p.31
  • “Wondering if enough is sufficient, if enough is in the right direction, if enough means loving just one person, enough? P.41
  • “Wrens migrating after the storm, down from Ontario for the summer; unaware of the tumult a world away.” p.75
  • “She sits in front of her all too honest mirror, as a thousand times before, one thought away from last week’s fantasy, another from this week’s fleeting memory, just one ahead of the nothingness, she fears.” p.82
  • “Tonight you end right quick, right here at table, Momma stirs her sauce with a long knife.” p.88
  • “Toils and tears of some creator we see as absent, but intuit in the present moment, moss underfoot or sandy shore, we find forgiveness in the sky.“ p.92
  • “Yet, it’s communion we’re really after, isn’t it? Not conversation, not community, but true communion at source – all light and insight.” p.99
  • “It is difficult, this staying in tenderness, this wanting to be” p.102
  • “What follows in the darkness, all a fantasy anyway, there’s not much real about any of it, but she, she goes on and on, almost as if there is no beginning and no end” p.107

My thanks to author Daniel L. Smith who approved the sharing of his words above. If you’d like to read more of his “wanderer’s spiritual journey … a collection (of) hopeful poems, possibly, because life continues, nothing is permanent, and breathing is such a fundamental right to exploring the conditions necessary for happiness in all humans, regardless of origin, journey, or destination.” check out his book available on Amazon.

Alone Again, Naturally

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It’s been nearly a month since our marriage was officially dissolved yet the heartbreak remains.

Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again (Naturally) is an old song but still captures how I’m feeling today.

Oh well, thank God for writing, for writers, and for all our fellow travelers on this crazy journey called life.

Another Brit offering comfort today is Jane Austen. In her book Mansfield Park, she reminds us that sometimes we are our own best companion.

Cheers.

Wake Up, Get Up, Rise Up … Again, and Again

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Today’s Center for Action and Contemplation meditation includes a reflection from theologian Matthew Fox on how we might reinvent and resurrect ourselves daily for our benefit and the benefit of others.

“Who does not seek a full and fuller life (and) how am I life for others?  

To be Resurrection for another I need to be Resurrection for myself. That means I cannot dwell in darkness and death and anger and oppression and submission and resentment and pain forever. I need to wake up, get up, rise up, put on life even when days are dark and my soul is down and shadows surround me everywhere  

Do not settle for death. Break out. Stand up. Give birth. Get out of easy pessimism and lazy cynicism. Put your heart and mind and hands to creating hope and light and resurrection. Be born again. And again. And again….”   

Why Love What You Will Lose?

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Tricycle’s online magazine offers a provocative article which discusses two key questions: Why love what you will lose? and What else is there to love?

Below is a highlight from this worthy article. To read the entire article see the link at the bottom of this post.

  • Suffering is, strangely, both sickness and medicine, impossible to tease apart in the end. … That we suffer and share this great fact of impermanence together is profound medicine in itself, a medicine that releases compassion, love, connectedness, and forgiveness as the healing source. 

From A Fire Runs through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis by Susan Murphy © 2023 by Susan Murphy. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO

Why Love What You Will Lose?

Deputized by Love

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Today, Dr. Rev. Jacqui Lewis‘ adapted Easter Message recounts Mary of Magdala. Dr. Lewis reminds us that each of us are also deputized to bring comfort to the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable by speaking truth to power: “You’ve got sermons to preach.”

Check it out below and/or go to the original post at cac.org/daily-meditations/called-by-name/

Called by Name 

In her homily at the 2019 CAC Universal Christ conference, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis reminds us that we are each called by the resurrected Christ who knows us by name:   

Christ is everywhere. Christ is in all things. We are all one. When you’re hungry, my stomach growls. When someone chops down a tree, I’m cut. When the oceans are being poisoned, I feel thirsty for something different. This is our calling, because we’ve been ordained, just like Mary, by the One who knows all about us. I’m inviting you to look in the mirror and see yourself. Recognize yourself as deputized by the Living God. Amen. 

Reference: 
Adapted from Jacqui Lewis, “Easter Liturgy: We Shall All Be Changed,” The Universal Christ Conference, Center for Action and Contemplation, March 31, 2019. Unavailable.  

We Too Suffer, Die and Rise Anew

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Below is today’s message from the Center for Action and Contemplation. In it, Richard Rohr explains how we miss the message if we focus on religion versus the natural life cycle of … life.

Hope you enjoy a couple of highlights from Richard Rohr’s Easter message:

An Example for Us All

Monday, April 21, 2025  

We got into trouble when we made the person and the message of Jesus into a formal religion, whereby we had an object of worship; then we had to have a priesthood, formal rules and rituals. I’m not saying we should throw those things out, but once we emphasize cult and moral code, we have a religion. When we emphasize experience, unitive experience, we have the world Jesus is moving around in. Once we made Jesus into a form of religion, we projected the whole message onto him alone. He died, he suffered, he rose from the dead, he ascended and returned to God. We thought that by celebrating these wonderful feasts like Easter that this somehow meant that we were members of the club.    …………

Easter is the great feast of the triumph of universal grace, the triumph of universal salvation, not just the salvation of the body of Jesus. What we’re talking about creates a people of hope, and a culture of hope that doesn’t slip into cynicism and despair. Easter is saying, we don’t need to go there. Love is going to win. Life is going to win. Grace is going to win. Hallelujah! 

Flaws and All – The Beginning of Authentic Love Highlights

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Sometimes romantic love hurts so bad we may start to feel that it is beyond our ability. But maybe, we’re trying too hard.

Below are highlights from a provocative Lion’s Roar article. For the full article, see this link: https://www.lionsroar.com/authentic-love/

Authentic Love

Sumi Loundon Kim, a Yale University chaplain, weighs in on seeing and communicating clearly in love and marriage.

Just as with the spiritual path, when we let go of control, we learn to love the person for who he or she is, flaws and all. That’s the beginning of true love.

We imagine a kind of perfection

But after a few years or a few decades or maybe a few lifetimes of dedicated striving, we start to get the sense that our progress is terribly slow, given all the effort we’ve made. There are even times when we completely lose it, when anger or fear overtakes us even after all that practice. It’s disappointing.

When we let go of needing that person to be a certain way, when we let go of control, we find that as we do so we learn to love the person for who he or she is, flaws and all. That’s the beginning of true love, authentic love with another.

the key is in accepting ourselves and our partners for who we are.

as we learn to ease up on our demands and needs from others, we learn that love is not about fulfilling a need—a need to change what we don’t like about ourselves, for example—but about letting go of needs altogether.“

Sumi Loundon Kim is the Buddhist chaplain at Yale University and founder of the Mindful Families of Durham. She is editor of the anthologies Blue Jean Buddha and The Buddha’s Apprentices, from Wisdom Publications, and the author of Sitting Together: A Family-Centered Curriculum on Mindfulness, Meditation, and Buddhist Teachings.