Four Little Words By My Doorstep

Beloved.
Be loved.
Be. 
Love.

Those words--just four in all--landed on my shoulders during my walk the other morning.  I found myself playing with them for the rest of that walk, chewing on them, moving the emphasis from one syllable to another,  applying them to what I was seeing and feeling.

I don't know why this meditation found me, but I'm mighty glad that it did.

Turns out that those four unique words--ingredients, if you will--are just about everything I need to live well in this world.  They are the perfect recipe for a grateful, grounded life.

Beloved.
A lifelong lover of lists, I'm glad that this was the first word to alight on my shoulders.  It is a word that pulls me out of myself and shines a warm light on everything and everyone else.  Beloved dog. Beloved neighbor.  Beloved tree.  Beloved sky.

Be loved.
I am taken aback when I realize just how many people have my back.  And when I open myself up to their love, I am a better version of me.

Be.
Of all the crazy summers in life, this one has felt like the wildest.  Unbearable heat, ridiculous news, heartbreaking violence, dwindling lives.  The what ifs too often nudged out the moment.  Be reminds me that being present is a sacred duty that can help us manage or put aside all those what ifs.

Love.
Boy, this one is the silver lining, the ultimate transformative ingredient.  A verb that requires repeating.  As Lin-Manuel Miranda uttered at the Grammys, "Love is love is love is love is love."

For someone who is a lousy pray-er and whose memory bottoms out more and more these days, these four little words that landed on my doorstep seem like a tonic. A mantra.  A meditation for me and a mediation for living in this world.  And I will do my best to lean into them each day and see what it is that they have to show me.