The Essential

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential
- in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth -
when simply being alive is a gift beyond measure."

~ Parker J Palmer

What is essential?
What is essential for me to write, to know, to be, to do, to heal, to reveal, to live, to share?
What is essential?
I wonder what it would be like to live my life sourced from the essential...from essence, to ask moment to moment, "what is essential now and now...and live the answers to the best of my ability."

What is essential for you right now?

I google essential: vitally necessary, basic and fundamental, all-important, crucial, indispensable, absolutely required, not to be used up or sacrificed, containing essence.

What is vitally necessary, crucial and absolutely required to liberate that which is imprisoned, behind bars, trapped within us at this moment? What is essential to liberate the Love that I am, that we are? What is essential to experience and deeply receive the Love that is seeking me, that is seeking us all?

As I sit here in my chair glancing out at the river and Mount St. Helens, I sense a deep and true prayer surfacing in my heart. I am calling us all home to the Essential...to the Essence, which is God, which is the Sacred Heart, which is the Beloved Community, which is the tenderness and the sweetness of our own Souls.

Let us come home now, to the essential. Let us not wait another moment to return to Love. Let us drop everything and turn and run toward the Beloved...naked with despair, naked with longing, naked with shame, naked with our own darkness, naked with delight, naked...naked...naked...let us come home to the arms of the One Essential, let us hear our Beloved Father and our Beloved Mother whispering to our souls, " beloved one, return again, come unto me." Matthew 11:28

Let us return to the essential. Let us return to speaking the essential into one another's hearts. Let us not belabor our words, let us not hide behind a mask of everyday chit chat and the rote patterns of how are you and what are you up to? Let us open our hearts and pour what is essential on the altar of our lives for others to see. Let us open our hearts and pour our love into one another's hearts like never before.

Let us reveal what is essential. Let us reveal what is essential to our own hearts, to our own souls, and for our own nourishment...what is essential...what I have may just be what is essential for you and what you have may just be what is essential for me.

Let us praise the essential. Let us praise the essential in ourselves, in one another, in our lives, in the world, in the cosmos. Let us watch and taken notice of the essential. Let us speak the words of the essential.

Let us remember, gather together, call together the essential. Let us gather in the essential, come together as the Essential. Let us remember, re-member the essential together.

Let us surrender to the essential, let us offer up our burdens to the essential, let us let go into the essential. Let us burn in the holy fires of the essential. Let us be born again, anew in the essential.

Let me be here, with you all now, as the Essential.
I surrender my love, I surrender my life to the Essential.
My healing is essential, my loving is essential, my written and spoken words are essential, my gathering in community is essential, my loving and being loved is essential, my touching and being touched is essential, my vulnerability is essential, my broken open heart is essential, my playful spirit is essential.

I am essential.
We are the Essential.

Amen.