What Love Is: Action
Love isn’t an emotional state or flowery words but action, a particular kind of action — sharing. Jim Manney
Thirty years ago my then teenage daughter and I moved to a tiny Spanish Land Grant village in Northern New Mexico. We were the only anglos at the time. My hope was to be immersed in the culture and learn the language, 14th century Castilian.
Not long after moving in I was told by an elderly neighbor with whom we shared a driveway that our nearest neighbor, the Majordomo of the village, “Hates anglos.” So I set out to be a neighbor Lala could not hate.
Without ever exchanging a word with the grand matriarch, when autumn harvest bore an abundance of Lala’s apricots on my side of our shared adobe wall, I picked and left them in a bag in front of her door. Snowfalls offered the opportunity to shovel a space for her car in front of her house and holidays were perfect moments to leave anonymous cards and treats. When the tiny (and I mean tiny) village chapel bell rang the stocatto death toll, I showed up with the villagers to mourn the death of one of the elders or, all to often, children.
Surprised does not even begin to describe my reaction when one day there was a knock on my portal door. In the more than two years I had lived there no one ever knocked on that door. So I put down my paintbrush, wiped my hands on my sweatshirt and ran downstairs from my painting studio.
Standing there was Lala. She handed me a grey plastic Walmart bag while saying, “I thought you could use this.” I opened the bag, pulled out a clean sweatshirt and burst out laughing. For two years Lala had been watching me come and go in my paint clothes and no doubt thought I needed an upgrade!
Lala accepted my invitation to come inside. And so began a true friendship.
I never did learn Spanish. It was two more years before Lala answered my question, “Why will no one in the village speak Spanish with me?” “Because the anglos have stolen so much from us, but not our language.”
But, Lala did invite me to come onto her property to pick peaches and nectarines from her trees for myself and eventually entrusted me with the tiny chapel key, asking me to help her be sure the candle in the Sanctuary Eternal Lamp never went out.
Love in deed, not in words, the sacred treasure I received living next door to Lala.
The above quote is found in to today’s selection in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney, a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things.And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.
Each day I read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.
INVITATION
Would you like to join me? The book is accessible on Amazon. Let me know in the comments to this post and sign up to get an email whenever I post. I would love to read your reflections too, public or private messages welcome!
If you find this post meaningful please clap and leave a comment. If you have not yet, please subscribe. Thank you!
Learn more about me at
https://www.debraasis.org
All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being,
Debra Asis
