Our Flower Essences have connected me with so many people living with such love and clear intention to serve others. Today I thank you all.

One Green Hope beloved who has given her life to serve people in pain and peril wrote today in anguish about communities affected by Helene. While she serves her hometown community each and every day, her heart is also in Asheville.

This woman has been through so much sorrow including the death of her beloved child. Amidst all her personal suffering she has continued to advocate for and take care of so many disenfranchised, suffering people. She truly lives a life of love in action.

If she is upset by the suffering of a specific group of people, she helps write a bill to support them. Then she buckles down and works until the bill gets passed. She has done this numerous times. She has put her money where her mouth is in her personal life as well. When her mother disinherited her sister, she gave her sister her share of the estate after her mother died.

Today this dear woman was trying to figure out why horrible things like Helene happen. I had no answers for her, but her reaching out did give me an opportunity to thank her for the way she lives her life. I don’t think she has any idea the difference her love has made, but it was great to have an opportunity to remind her that her love matters and has mattered to so many.

One of the things I noticed when challenges filled my life was that some people wanted to frame the events as if I deserved them. Patriarchy suggests that if we are good, work hard, do the right things, we will be spared suffering and for those who don’t do a good enough job, well…. the suffering is their just reward. This bogus idea magnifies our suffering by leaving us suffering first from the actual challenge and then from the inner conviction that we deserved the suffering.

This friend does not live with this erroneous belief. She never buys into the patriarchal myth that some people deserve to suffer more than others. She works to relieve any and all from the burdens of their suffering.

The other thing I said to her was that I thought her love was enough. MORE than enough. In fact her love is the only thing that matters. It is what is needed and cuts right to the heart of every situation she finds herself in.

When we are suffering, we need love in action. It doesn’t matter if the person handing us the bowl of soup doesn’t have a theory why bad things have happened to us. The love of the soup bearer is what matters. That and the soup.

All the mind ideas we can gather to explain the unexplainable are just one more thing to let go of. Right now, I frame this as giving these ideas up to the Divine flow of the Eight, using the Eight Garden Essence to help me let go of things that don’t matter and that are not real.

Love is the only real thing. It is the only thing that matters. And so many of you live this truth in loving action every day. You walk your dog even in the freezing rain. You thank the grocery clerk. You tip the waitress even when things haven’t gone well because you know she’s not in charge of the back of the house. You knit for people who need chemo caps. You smile at a stranger who looks like they are having a bad day. You cook for hungry people even when you are very tired. You listen even when a friend is going over the same territory for the umpteenth time. You hug when hugs are needed. You gently take a bug outside when it has wandered in. You laugh at yourself and not at others.

I thank you all for each loving action that fill your lives. I salute you.