A Heart Opener...

These photos are so precious! We recently received them from an online friend, and I was so moved by them that I had to share them with you.

This is the short story that came with these pictures: Lily is a Great Dane that has been blind since a bizarre medical condition required that she have both eyes removed. For the last 5 years, Maddison, another Great Dane, has been her sight. The two are, of course, inseparable.

This was the caption at the bottom of the photos…

"People will forget what you said; People will forget what you did.
But people will never forget how you made them feel."

~~

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives
means the most to us, we often find that it is those who,
instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures,
have chosen rather to share our pain
and touch our wounds
with a gentle hand.

The friend who can be silent with us
in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief & bereavement,
who can tolerate not knowing,
not curing,
not healing,
and face with us the reality of our powerlessness,
that is a friend who cares…”

Henri Nouwen

~

You might also like to view
this wonderful
Heart warming video
click here.

"Love Waiting"

I’ve been wanting a dog for a few months now. The thought of getting a dog excites me for some reason. After our cat, affectionately nicknamed “Yodi Bodhi,” died last August after 18+ years I said I was not going to have another animal. It was too much responsibility, demanding a lot of time and energy in the last 8 years of his life, and tied us down in many ways. But – here we are 8 months later and I’m swooning for a dog. There can never be another cat like “Yoda”, so it must be a dog – but not just any dog.

And then I read a blogpost over at 108zenbooks that did me in. Briefly, it was about a dog named Hachiko who, after his owner died while at work, went to the train station every day for *9 years* to wait for his “owner”/life companion to come home! (Until he himself died on the steps!) Genju describes this as “love waiting!” OMG. My Heart started quaking open. Actually my Heart has been experiencing a lot of little quakes lately. I’ll call them pre-shocks, as if warning me of the big quake to come. And I can feel it, the big quake is coming. This intuiting of the big Heart Quake is causing an anxious quiver to run throughout my body. I want to run even before it has actually happened. And I can barely sit with it long enough to get in touch with it before wanting to get up and eat or watch TV or whatever else I can *consume* to numb this deep quaking of the Heart. Even writing about it is creating the RUN response!

I know that having a dog will quake my Heart and crack it open – full quake. I know it will. And yet I want it. Am I ready for that!?

So what is it that I *really* want? What is it that a dog represents for me? I think the phrase “love waiting” says it all… I want “love waiting” - that unconditional, tail wagging, love response that only dogs can give. I’ve tried with humans but it doesn’t seem to work out too well – humans tend to bite. :) And I’ve been known to send a few darts to the heart as well… But can I call a dog “love waiting?” How about “Buddha” – the *Essence* of “Love Waiting…” – or Being-Self, or Divine Mother, or Spirit, or Awareness, or…. You get the idea…

A dog doesn’t care about our baggage; doesn’t feel a need to argue or wrangle over words like “self” – "me" -“non-duality”, or the meaning of “Truth”, or “existence.” A dog *is* in many ways a reflection of “True Nature:” loving, accepting, open-hearted - just Be-ing Presence in the way that only dogs know how to do – “love waiting.” Sorry I just love that phrase.

I ask myself, so why is the thought of all this causing all this heart-quaking, this quiver in my being? What am I trying to avoid? What do I not want to see?

I have a sneaking suspicion it’s “Love Waiting” – but I’ll have to let you know after “The Quake…”

~*~