Hello friends and welcome to this meditation.
I'm in the garden so welcome the sounds of nature and of life as part of this meditation.
I found myself very drawn recently to the words at the end of the welcoming prayer.
If you're not familiar with the welcoming prayer I have I think three different versions of it on my insight timer page.
And the last line of the welcoming prayer is I open to your love and action within.
And whenever I reach those words within myself I always notice a softening.
I open to your love and action within.
It's like my whole body and being breathes more deeply.
It's a sigh of relief.
It's a sigh of everything's gonna be okay.
And I linger with those words these days.
I linger with them more than I used to and I repeat them.
I say often open open open.
I open to your love.
I open to your goodness.
I open to your grace.
And as I say them things begin to shift within me.
Things begin to rearrange and find their rightful order.
Those words welcome and invite me back to what is true and real and grounding and safe.
Those words take me away from the things I can get caught up in.
The narratives,
The stories,
The negativity,
The noise of life.
They root me into God,
Into love,
Into goodness,
Into grace.
And I find myself once more.
It's like I come home to myself.
And I use those words too with the people I work with that I accompany.
I often find myself inviting them to open.
And I normally say something like open whatever that means to you.
See if it's possible to open.
And maybe when you hear those words it's like a flower opening to the warmth and the sunlight.
Maybe you imagine your heart opening to receive love.
Maybe it's like a door opening to let the breeze in on a hot and sticky day.
What do you notice in your body and your being with those words,
That invitation to open?
It can be a scary thing to open.
So often it's safer to close,
To close over,
To tighten,
To hide,
To be like the bud that goes in tight.
It's a sheltering.
It's a retreat.
It's a closing.
To open is possibly to risk feeling exposed.
To open is to be vulnerable and to risk that vulnerability not being seen,
Not being understood,
Being trampled on.
And to open is opening to the possibility of receiving love in deeper measure,
Of receiving comfort and kindness and goodness.
The beloved is always wanting,
Always wanting to meet us in our vulnerabilities,
In our openness.
Even when to open feels a little bit scary and uncomfortable and maybe even unfamiliar.
The beloved wants to enter into all of that saying it's okay.
It's okay if to open feels that way and I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am with you in the midst of your complication,
In the midst of your desire to open and your desire to stay closed.
I am here in the midst of your desire to be vulnerable and your desire to hide and retreat.
I am here in it all and I love you and I see you and it's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
You're going to be alright.
So I leave you with this invitation to open whatever that means to you.
And I offer you love and hope and grace in that openness and I join you there as I too open even on the days when I'd rather stay closed.
You are loved my friend.
We are loved and the beloved enters into our openness.
Amen.
