The world, the way we have set it up in the last centuries, has a way of sucking up time, space, tasks, energy commitments so that what and who we love become marginalized, put on a back burner, saved for later. For what cause? There is the question. For what cause.

Whatever the cause, the evidence of it piles up. I’ve sorted it into baskets, lists, folders, areas for accumulation that try to be visible enough not to disappear, but neat enough not to look like untended messes (which they are). They threaten sanity. Today, with all of this glaring at me, and a week ahead that stares me down, what my heart loves has reached out to me taking over my time. I let it. I succumbed. I care.

On the world news tonight I saw a half hour version of the unthinkable – tornadoes, radiation, oil spills, deaths, ruined lives, record breaking disasters. In the midst of all of this effort to bring to public awareness the stories exploding all over our precious Spaceship Earth is a tenor I listen for, and only it keeps me going. Love is the only reason anyone cares to bring the stories, tune into the stories, to record people sorting through the chaos, crying over the photos of grandmothers, raising flags to grandfathers, showing faces of animals rescued.

What is in the macrocosm is in the microcosm, and vice versa. I see in my little life the devastation, radiation, debris at so many levels – and please hear me – that is not to diminish the horrors by comparison to my privileged little life without physical hunger. But what I know to focus upon here, in the microcosm, is love. To put my ear to the ground and listen to its footsteps, understand that vibration. Give that attention and energy. Follow it.

That is what we can do in the macrocosm, on Spaceship Earth, too. Listen to the love. Let its tones rise above the others. Feed it. Cry with it. Believe in its power. Focus there. Give energy there. Let the other rhythms, like ignoring the coughing at the symphony, subside. Listen for music of love; support, feed and follow it.