On Mindful Monday, my readers and I practice the art of pausing, TRYING to be still, or considering, ever so briefly, the big picture. We’re hoping this soul time will provide enough peace of mind to get us through the week!

On the CD of Elisha Goldstein’s mindfulness exercise he recites Derek Walcott’s poem, “Love after Love”:

The time will come
When with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

I’ve been reading it everyday because I’m just now walking to the door where my true self lives. I can identify the moments where I accidentally take a detour because my body speaks up: I experience a pinch in my stomach like the one I feel before speaking to a large crowd, and an accompanying nausea. Like I could pass up a plate of chocolate-cookies. I want to burst into tears but I try to hold back until I am alone.
In “The Inner Voice of Love,” Henri Nouwen writes:

I fluctuate between period of security, when I know that I am loved by my husband and family, friends and pets. And then, for some reason, the security goes bye-bye, and in my neediness I start grabbing for the relationships where I know I am not fed and nurtured. I demand that a friend gives more to me than she is capable of. I hop into my emotional ambulance and try to rescue the hurting–where I convince myself that if I save my friend from her suffering, then she can give me what I need. But the irony of this rescue mission is that the more energy I expend on manipulating this relationship to cover my needs, the more vulnerable and exposed I feel. Writing this all down makes me see how ridiculous the cycle really is.

I know the difference between loving unconditionally and loving with stipulations. When I send an email with no expectations and don’t hear back, I sometimes forget that I sent the email. It certainly doesn’t interrupt my day. But when I press send, expecting to hear “thank you” within two days and don’t hear “thank you” until day five, a hysteria ensues in that is hard to channel and control. That’s because I have sent the email or made the phone call or sent the gift from a place where I am not yet received, as Nouwen would explain. He writes:

You need the other to experience inner wholeness, to have a sense of wellbeing. You have become emotionally dependent on the other and sink into depression because of his or her absence. It feels as if the other has taken away a part of you that you cannot live without. Then the pain of absence reveals a certain lack of trust in God’s love. But God is enough for you.

I’m getting there, though, as my stomach ache and nausea now point me to the door of freedom, to the door of my true self, where I shall love the stranger who is I.

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