10-14-2007

A dear friend brought a book of puns to me, and I realize now that I should have hidden it. Ralphie (Tom’s cartoon dog) got hold of it and is threatening to lay more of those puns on us. I’m telling you this so you’ll be ready to duck and protect yourself.

He’s insisting on asking us a question and I’ll humor him, so be prepared…

“Ralphie, what is your question?”

“It’s this. There are a lot of people in China, but do you know why there are so few telephones for all those people?”

“No, Ralphie, why is that?”

“Because there are so many people with the names WING and WONG, and the Chinese are afraid they’ll wing the wong number.”

Ouch! That’s awful. I often wonder what I ever did in the past to merit a karmic experience of having an imaginary dog who tells bad puns. I must have done something really WEIRD.

It’s not easy to be serious after being around Ralphie, but I’m now going to try…

I wrote an essay about an incident that happened in the visitation room here. It helped me to explore love a little deeper. People understand what it means to need another, to want something from another, but they often don’t understand what it means to really love.

To be totally loving means to be willing to give every being total freedom to be, do, and have what they wish. Love lets go. Need holds on. This is the way we can tell the difference between love and need. This means among other things, letting go of expectation, requirements and rules that we would impose on loved ones.

To be totally loving, I believe, means to be fully present, fully aware. To be fully open, honest, transparent. It means to be fully willing to express the love that is in our heart. To be loving means to be naked without a hidden agenda or hidden motive, without hidden anything. This is the nature of who we are.

This brings me to what I call the “Magic Question”. Whenever we’re wondering what to do next, let’s ask, “WHAT WOULD LOVE DO NOW?”
We always know the answer. It’s like magic. It’s cleansing like a soap. It washes away all doubt, all fear. It bathes the mind with the wisdom of the soul. When we go into the heart of love and come from that place in all our choices and decisions, we will find peace.

When we connect in the space of love, there is no longer two…only one. Though I appear to be writing this in a prison dormitory and you appear to be reading it in another time and place, we can connect in that space beyond time and distance. And what a magnificent space it is! I’ll meet you there.