Mags Deane has kindly given me permission to repost this jewel – which touched me to the quick – from her blog.  In the post, called Tenderized Heart, she writes:

This is one of my favorite pieces of writing, from Jeannie Zandi.

I like to come to it when my heart is looking for some softening.

May we live for this dear hearts.

There is nothing between you and I.  My heart is tenderized to the extent that when your pain rises, I feel it in my chest, and there’s simply this love that doesn’t have a two.  Because that extra one, that “me” and “mine”, is over, it went when the will was broken by life’s refusal to do it “my” way.  So there’s no longer anything between us.

In that, this love rises that knows the beauty and the heartbreak of our shared humanness, the heights we can soar to, the depths we can sink to, the heartbreak that we must bear because we often cannot embody what our hearts wish to embody in all its beauty and perfection, the love that we are and have the potential to express.  We long to be love in every cell and we fail so miserably, and it hurts us to the core.  We’re so beautiful, and so brave, and so screwed.  We can’t get away from the unconscious aspects of ourselves and we can’t commit ourselves entirely to the dungeon.  We are all crucified on that cross of humanness.

And for this there is such a rising of compassion and mercy in the empty heart that has taken that crucifixion to the end, such a sweetness and a desire to give whatever kindness or assistance one can to these brave and beautiful creatures – you as a servant are born.  And then God moves us deeply to see that everyone is not only Her creation for me to give myself to, everyone is actually Her.  The feeling rises that says anything I have I will give you, oh brave children of God, oh sweet faces of Her.

I could never repay the debt I have to the Beloved for the gift of being allowed to see Her face, to see that everyone has always been Her, and that I’ve spent years treating them and myself, which is Her, as objects or enemies, or merely walked by so many in need or failed to look upon Her face with the love that is so obviously due Her.  What was I doing?  What was I thinking? As Donovan sang in Brother Sun, Sister Moon, “preoccupied with selfish misery”.  That’s what I was doing.

And an awareness of every moment of this selfish obliviousness is there, alongside the clear sight that all are so worthy of our love and kindness.  We know there just aren’t enough years to praise Her name, to love Her tender face in the faces of our brothers and sisters.  There is no bad guy!  There is only the embodiment of Her, on the cross of heaven and earth, angel and creature, struggling to live up to Her heavenly gift under the weight of this unconscious conflict and self-hate.  There is nothing so compelling as that and to offer whatever we have to that.

This is something that rises when you get broken.  There’s this wealth of gratitude, this feeling that the debt can never be repaid for the beauty of Her in every being.  I couldn’t possibly give any of you enough to serve the liberation of the love that is hidden in your heart.  Ammachi says I want to die comforting someone – she’s hugging herself to death and it’s her joy, because everything in her says I am here to be given to You who I am as well.  That is the feeling when we’re emptied out. It’s what we are underneath the conflict.

And it keeps getting deeper.  We keep getting more sensitive, more transparent.  Pretty soon we might as well sit inside everybody’s pants, it’s so intimate.  You have a feeling across the room and I feel you.  And it’s my joy to have you guys fill my body with your angst.  I’m dying to help you with that.  I’ll meet anything you have.  You have a cold?  Give it to me.  I can’t even imagine the joy Christ must have felt to die for his God in the form of his brothers and sisters.  What else can I give?  All I’ve got is my life, sure.  What a joy it is to love you, to be this love, to know you as love, to break the bread of love with each other, to give you, my most precious, whatever it is I have to give, which is never enough to glorify your beauty and Her name, and to liberate the dove of gorgeous tender love that lives in your heart.

And guess what?  All the while She is loving Herself through you.  THROUGH you.  So you get loved as it moves through your body.  Your entire body is radiated by God’s love as you apparently love.  There’s only Her radiant love.

So, yes, that’s the only thing worth longing for.  If you have the longing for this love, yeah!  Stoke that fire, burn in that place where you want it so bad.  Don’t calm that down!  It’s worth it.

~ Jeannie Zandi

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