I CHOOSE TO SERVE LOVE

Apprenticeship to Love: April 1, 2026

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Things to remember on this day for fools, a favourite day in my calendar:

• How small I am.
• How much distance lies between even those I am closest to.

Feeling small and feeling alone are opportunities for me to collapse. To feel myself as only neediness.

But –in the spirit of today's foolishness!– instead of collapsing, I choose to be grateful. Grateful for distance. Grateful for discomfort. Grateful for inconsequence. Yes, grateful even as I resist my discomforts: they remind me that even in my inconsequence I am powerful.

...

The universe is big.

What a small word, to encompass such vastness, unimaginable vastness! There are no words that can adequately describe how inconsequential I feel in the face of this bigness. How do I even breathe, feeling this small?

...

David Deida offers three broad "stages" of knowing wht love is. I will borrow these stages as ways of being in the world, for experiencing the infinite and unimaginable. The first stage is one of simply surviving. I believe that the supply is finite. I fearfully grab for all the food, money, sex I can lay my hands on. I believe that hoarding and consuming as much as possible I will protect myself from the immensity of life, the world, the universe. That I will not starve. That I will not be destitute. That I will not be lonely.

In my second stage I begin to see that the horizon is more distant than I first thought. My approach to supply is see that a we-focus benefits me, too. I learn to negotiate. I learn to share. I learn that cooperation and collaboration bring me more security in the still daunting and overwhelming reality of being in this life. I allow my heart to admit others' needs, as well as my own. As Deida says, how we live on this planet would be much improved if more of us were able to live and breathe in this second stage. I came late to this stage. But, better late than never...

Because now I am beginning to see that there is no horizon, at leas as far as my puny so-called "needs" are concerned. Now I am beginning to appreciate, in this third stage, that my happiness and well-being are tied up with serving needs beyond my own. If I have any needs, now, it is the singular need to serve love.

Some people come to this earlier in their lives. I am grateful. I benefit from their early wisdom. These younger folks make all of our lives better.

What I have come to know in this sixth decade of life here is a benevolent flow that was and remains always present. The struggle to survive is now a dance with a power or force that is deeper than I can image. It is a dance of service. Service to love. What seemed overwhelming has become an ocean of nourishment, and –when I allow myself to be– I am bouyed beyond my needs and desires.

There are moments when I live in this third stage. Moments.

And still, many more moments when I am concerned with survival, or whether the sharing of the fruits of life, the burdens of life is equitable. I don't begrudge these latter moments. They teach me. With practice, and especially meditative practice, I am better able to appreciate what is offered me.

...

A few days I said to my beloved, I am grateful for the distance between us. It gives me the necessary time and space to pause, reflect, learn, to step from first stage through second stage, and sometimes, to cross the threshold into serving love before serving myself.

In this life I choose to go deep. Of all the many things I can choose, I choose the pleasure and the mystery of these unimaginable and unreasonable depths.

...

Every moment I can ask myself: Am I choosing love? Or choosing myself? Or, as Deida asks, Am I opening? Or am I closing to this moment?

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Our prayer is that you understand this universe is not billions, but quadrillions of years old and then love, honor and cherish your life in the grandness and freedom of this scale. (Guru Singh)

🌀You're not like that now. (My beloved, my oracle)

🌀The Conscious Warrior practices the cultivation of wonder and awe. (John Wineland, Precept 7)

🌀...even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvellous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet