There are days when I wonder — seriously Louise. Couldn’t you have just decided to write this blog for a month? What’s with the year-long public commitment?

Those are the days I have to dig deep to stay conscious, to stay connected, to stay open to the unexpected appearance of grace unfolding in full bloom in my life.

Yesterday, I received an email from a woman whom I knew when working at the shelter. Then I received a comment here from a man I’d known while working there too. In  their words my heart was touched by the grace of gratitude and humility and the capacity for the human spirit to soar free of what would keep it tethered to the bonds of pain and shame. I was touched by their beauty and their willingness to grow beyond the trauma of the label ‘homeless’ into the fullness of their human condition. (Thank you SA and NS).

It is the gift of reciprocity.

Everyday I experience life through my human condition in all its human imperfections.  And everyday I strive to connect to perfection. And in my ego’s drive to ‘be perfect’ I forget I am, perfectly perfect in all human imperfections — in all my beauty and the beast connotations, in all my id and ego gyrations, in all my yin and yang exhortations to be more, be better, be perfect.

Fact is, we are all perfect just the way we are. Loving our perfection, just the way we are, gives us the grace of loving our imperfections, just the way they are too.

And sometimes, we need others to help us see the difference between the striving to be perfect versus the acceptance of loving our human condition, jus the way we are. Sometimes, we need someone to remind us that our difference counts most when we touch each other, heart to heart.

Mother Teresa once said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

The difference I want to make, today and everyday, is to be like that drop in the ocean. To be connected in this sea of life through the Love that flows all around. To be the eyes that see what is missing. The words that touch hearts and open minds. The arms that embrace weary souls in tender loving care. The hands that hold out hope when all is deemed lost. The heart that breaks open in Love to love myself, just the way I am, just the way you are, just the way we all are.

Yesterday, I received gifts from those whose lives I’ve touched and who touched mine. In their words I let myself receive their gift of gratitude and in that circle of giving, my thankfulness ripples outward.

In giving we receive. In giving, we are connected. And in our connection we are all perfectly human in all our imperfections shining in Love.

This morning, I am grateful for making this blog a year-long process. In its unfolding my gratitude strengthens and my understanding deepens as I fall in love with who I am in this world when I let go of  ‘being perfect’  in exchange for joyfully living up our shared experience of  ‘being human’ in the rapture of now.

Namaste.