terrypetersen

There is a road

that runs straight through your heart.

Walk on it.

(Macrina Wiederkehr, “Seasons of Your Heart”)

The top of my stove needs a good scrubbing. It wears the residue of dinner, at least the splattering from it. I’m amazed at how much it wants to remain adhered to the surface, like a memory: a trauma perhaps, or a life changing event.

Instead of staying with these thoughts I think about the joy I’ve had preparing special foods on this surface. I have created my own recipes, many that worked. I have also followed the directions in a cookbook, then dumped the result into the garbage, like the time I added baking soda instead of corn starch to a cherry pie filling. That caused one bubbling mess before I realized what I had done wrong. The clue came when I saw an unopened box of cornstarch on my counter. It helps to smile at my own foibles. After all, no one, except the cook, suffered from that experience.

The word suffered brings me back to my original concerns. Some folk I love are hurting. And I can’t scrub out their problems with elbow grease and a steel wool pad. I can diffuse the energy that binds me by cleaning—praying all the way. Somehow, that helps. Don’t know how, but it does.

You can’t change anyone but yourself. Not a new concept. But haven’t most of us tried, in one way or another? “Shoulding” all over someone leads to frustration. Distant silence translates into I-don’t-care. How, just how, do you find a way of letting people find answers? I listen. Yes, but it feels so helpless sometimes.

Eventually, as I scrub, I look outside and see the trees covered with snow. It’s the end of March. That isn’t out-like-a lamb, the way spring is expected to appear. Mother Nature doesn’t need permission from the calendar. The branches create an incredible, random pattern of white, one that won’t remain forever. Spring will arrive. At least it always has. The snow on the street has already melted.

The passageway out has opened. Now that the stove shines again, I look for the road that runs through my heart. It considers the possibility of miracles. They could happen. Maybe not. In the meantime, I release all choices that are not mine, and whisper love without judgment for someone special to me. The gray lifts as the sun peeks through, just a little. Hope. No promises.

I accept that as enough, for now, and take a stroll through the road that passes directly into my heart.