What's Love Got To Do With It?

In the Eastern mind, the path of the spiritual journey leads to enlightenment; the path of spirituality in the Western traditions seeks personal transformation opening one to salvation. Granting all the differences of rituals, dogmas, practices, and religious texts, the end goal is the same as I see it: a journey that leads one home to one's heart and union with all of humanity. Oneness. Unity. Love.

However,  you might ask as Tina Turner once did, "What's love got to do with it?"  What does being one with all of humanity have to do with unemployment or under employment, a free school lunch, food pantries and white privilege...all of which have been in the headlines in my little corner of the world this past month?

Simply...Everything.  For nearly four decades, I worked from the farm to the corporate board room to educate myself and pull myself up to what has been considered a middle class life style. While remaining involved with my church and community, I was blessed to co-create a family with four beautiful children, educate myself to a post-graduate degree, and help build a comfortable home in a safe neighborhood. When I volunteered hundreds of hours to charitable causes and philanthropic efforts, I did so with gratitude for my health and good fortune wrought from a hard work ethic. I looked forward to retirement and a lifestyle with more choices in a couple of years--just like other baby-boomers my age.

Then a job loss hit in the wave of the recession; then a divorce hit; then a child's health needs hit. And before I knew it, I was standing in line outside a church waiting for my turn at Ruby's Pantry. And, like any writer worth her ink, I began asking questions of others in line to find out what their story was.

Here are thumbnail profiles of those who stood with me:

• Single mothers or fathers in their mid-twenties, employed in service positions that pay slightly more than minimum wage and way less than needed to provide for a young family;
• Home-schooling moms with husbands who had jobs such as postal worker or peace officer; 
• Retirees living on social security and a small pension;
• Professional (you read correctly) divorced, late middle-aged women going home from the office;
• Men dressed in their machinist work jackets or company uniform shirts.

The saying used to go, "We're all just two paychecks away from the bread line."  From what my unscientific sampling showed, "All our paychecks, pensions, or privilege won't guarantee we'll stay out of the food pantry line."

Which brings me back to being one with all humanity.  I made a couple of new acquaintances in that line,  exchanged a few recipes and shared some job networking tips. 

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk with the Buddhist mind, had his enlightenment on the corner of 4th and Walnut streets in Kentucky. Mine was outside a neighborhood church, standing in line. 

Merton wrote, "My vocation (job or calling) does not really make me different from the rest or put me in a special category except artificially...I am still a member of the human race--and what more glorious destiny is there, since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race...Thank God, thank God that I am like others, that I am only a [person] among others...It is a glorious destination..." 

                                  Oneness, Unity & Yes,  Love.     Write that on your Valentine's card. 

May Peace be in All,  Jane 

* Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Doubleday, 1966).