Gobsmacked by Kindness and Generosity...

Within the last week I have been the recipient of unexpected kindness and generosity.  Don’t know why that surprised me, but it did.  And I am always grateful for the kind and generous comments that I receive here on a regular basis from all of you.  They are always most welcome and appreciated.  But these other acts of kindness and generosity were totally unexpected. 

I was surprised last Friday when returning home from errands by a package in the mail from a blogger friend.  It lifted my heart and brought joy.  And I realized that I have been withholding myself in that department, holding back from spontaneous acts of kindness and generosity.  Not reaching out to others in unexpected ways.  When I received the package I remembered how much fun it is to give unexpected joy – to brighten someone else’s life unexpectedly - as well as to receive it!  My heart was awakened by this most generous gift.

Then Monday we had a Chimney Sweep come to clean out our chimney and check for nests and potential problems.  He ended up doing some unexpected repairs to the chimney.  Later that day I noticed that the sagging soffit on the chimney side of the house had been repaired.  At first I couldn’t imagine who would have gone 30 feet up to screw it back in, then realized the chimney sweep was the only one here that had ladders that would go up that high.  So I called Mr. Chimney Sweep the next morning and asked if he had fixed it.  He reluctantly said – “yes.”  I gave him my most sincere appreciations. And then he said “this is going to sound crazy, but ‘the Lord’ told me to do it and not tell you.”  Now what to do with THAT!  Normally this kind of comment would have put me off.  Being a former fundamentalist Christian, I am attuned to those kinds of “spreading the gospel" tactics.   But in this case I didn’t care WHO told him to do it, I was just gobsmacked, and grateful, that he did!  So I thanked him again, and called him an angel.  And to tell you the truth, I was deeply touched by his act of generosity and kindness, no matter what his belief system. It’s all semantics anyway.  Who is ‘the Lord’ – it is many things to many people.  One could say, my Heart told me to do it.  One could say it was intuition.  Whatever it was – I am humbled and my heart was opened through his act of kindness and generosity.

The next day my Heart was still aglow from these unexpected delights. Driving down the road I broke into laughter and tears at the same time, realizing that life really is all about Love – touching the hearts of others, being a presence of Love.  Love makes itself known *through* the presence and actions of others, whether one calls it ‘the Lord” or Buddha, or Allah, or God, The Heart, or Intuition, or Friend.  All there is is the Universal Heart of Love reaching out to us, under many names and disguises, opening our hearts through acts of kindness through unsuspecting “lovers.”

It brings me to my knees and humbles me, because I realized that in all these years of searching for “the Truth”, the Sacred, the Divine, it never was about whether there’s a me, or no-me, or “enlightement” - 0r even Non-duality – but about opening the Heart, and letting love *in.*  Opening to the Reality that it’s the universal language of Love that is *felt*, not wrangling over Truth, or semantics.

Mr. Chimney Sweep is Love.  Blogger friends are Love.  We are all Love – underneath the messiness and pain of life…  When you go beyond the veils of duality, of light and darkness, right and wrong, of Truth and lie, there is only vast cosmic Love – everywhere…

Have you been gobsmacked lately? J

“We know what sparks the light inside.
It does not matter where it comes from.
What matters is that we look, and find,
and feel the deep presence.”

Ruth at Washed Stones

“We are because we are seen;
we are because we are loved.
The world is because it is beheld
and loved into being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours