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I am caught up in the pain of knowing another family will be separated from each other, torn apart because of a human system created to maintain power and purity. I am a survivor of a fractured family and I was fortunate, yet I am bruised, but not broken. My journey of healing is a daily reprieve of being mindful by using a combination of daily rituals, meditation, prayers, mantras, and acts of kindness. I am a man of love and I daily exercise my gift of being love in action. I believe in forgiveness, but my knees are bruised from kneeling.
It is another stormy Monday, my body rising up to be present for the flow of life. Yesterday I rose up to be in prayer, meditation and reaching out to touch my earth family, love them without conditions within my heart and mind. I needed to love myself enough to love another. Loving someone or something, on an ongoing basis, can be a challenge to stay present within the movement of the human condition and its evolution.
As I rise I remember the struggle of the day before, how I almost forgot to purchase my ticket to ride the train of life. I must remember the truths of the many breaths I had to take in order to stay present in my onslaught of doubts and fears. I had to remember the process, the steps I took in order to swallow my fears and get up anyway to be present for life today. I had to remember I am a part of the moving train to freedom of heart, mind, body, and spirit. The train is moving and I know I need to stay on track, clock in the memories of the passing scenery, so I can go to the next station to purchase my next ticket to ride. Another stormy Monday and another day to get real about how I am going to ride the train of life. I just want to be free.
The train keeps on moving down the line and life is looking me right in the eyes. It is the time of loving, time for the train to stay at the station and forget all the complications of humans who just being the best they can be. We need a new way of being. If one of us is enslaved, then none of us are free.
Sundays have always been my day of renewal. It has always been a day I would set aside to be free in my listening, my being present for the presence of people. It was a day of being family, breakfast, getting dressed for church and then Sunday dinner with family and friends. It was a day I would experience the power of people being present in my life. I felt free and loved.
I knew the importance of family, being raised for many years with my grandparents. Their ancestral presence secured stability within the development of my personal self-worth and the knowledge of my history as a person. Families are always windows of truth. My grandmother went blind during a simple hernia operation because her heart stopped from a lack of oxygen caused by an allergic reaction to anesthesia. Having to be her eyes, from time to time, taught me how to see and describe what I was seeing to another human being. I learn to unselfishly give from the grace of empathy and compassion. The base of the traditions of my grandparents’ teachings always included the act of loving.
I will always remember the rituals of Sunday breakfast and Sunday dinner with the family. I live within the ritual of family as a way of being. I am a better person when I join my family/village prototype. I have a better sense of belonging when I am allowed to be.
With the weekend over and Monday at the door, I am not always ready to take the train ride to responsibility, being separated from my liberated sense of freedom. It seems our entire lives we are searching for relief from the responsibilities of life, looking for personal freedom. We can find freedom in the midst of responsibility. Feeling saddled with the responsibility of being present to be a part of a family unit means you have to give in order to receive. It is part of the fate of unity.
When you have no sense of family because you don’t have family connections, the task of living life is more of a struggle. Having a physical disconnect creates an emotional disconnection. Being without a family allows you to be a stranger in a strange land…alone on the train.
I know how it feels to be alone, alone because you have no sense of self-worth. Alone because you are not included. Alone because you are not recognized to have worth as a human being, being separated from the herd.
It is another stormy Monday and my personal tears are the water of my storm, the water watering my garden of resisting human shame. We must remember we are a human family, just the same.
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Photo by Taylor Grote on Unsplash