“I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving … we are turned to hating.” –– Alan Paton, from Cry, The Beloved Country
Back in the late ‘90s, I worked for Grailville, located in Loveland, Ohio, just up the road a bit from where I live. Grailville is the center of The Grail in the United States. The Grail, founded in Europe and rooted in Catholicism, is a spiritual lay movement, empowering women to work for the healing of the world.
Author, artist and activist Trina Paulus has been a Grail member since leaving her family home in Cleveland, Ohio, upon her high school graduation. She lived at Grailville from 1949 through the early ‘60s. While there, she developed a line of sacred sculptures in which people still find deep meaning. She later moved to Montclair, New Jersey, raised a son, and wrote Hope for the Flowers, a book that has sold more than four million copies since its publication in 1972.
During my tenure at Grailville, the director asked that I take on a project to work with Trina to re-introduce her sculptures, that is, get them back in production. Trina and I did just that. We also became friends.
This past fall, The Grail hosted an exhibit at Grailville featuring Hope for the Flowers, bringing Trina back to Ohio. It was like old times, Trina and I together, with her staying at my house part of the time. But it was not like old times because the times are so different. While there were political disagreements across the land when Trina and I were working together twenty-five years ago, it was nothing like the divides we face in this country today. And I found myself grateful for Trina’s words that reminded me that, in the end, it is how much we love that matters.
THE STORY OF YELLOW AND STRIPE
If you have never had the pleasure of reading Hope for the Flowers, I encourage you to do so. It is a simple book with lovely illustrations, telling the story of the caterpillar who risks everything to become a butterfly.
Yellow and Stripe are two caterpillars who love each other. Then Stripe leaves Yellow to climb a pillar of caterpillars because all the other caterpillars are. What is at the top? They cannot see that it goes nowhere, that upon reaching the top they will be pushed off to their death by those coming behind them.
After Stripe leaves, Yellow is bereft, not knowing what to do. She just knows the pillar of caterpillars is not the way to go. She has yet to understand she must build a cocoon to become what she is born to be –– a beautiful butterfly.
“If we get off (the climb to the top of the pillar) and dare risk the dark night of the soul, and (go into our own) cocoon, we can come out the other end … we can carry the love of one flower to another (while at the same time be) fed by their nectar,” says Trina.1
BOUND BY LOVE
To carry love. But just how is the question I seek to answer as I go through my daily life. (I thank poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for this framing.) What does it mean to carry and act from a place of love? What does that look like? I don’t always know.
Sharon Salzberg, author and teacher of loving-kindness meditation, notes that when teaching, often a student will come to her and ask, “Why should I have loving-kindness or compassion for the person who doesn’t think people like me should exist?”
Salzberg’s reply: “It depends on (your) notion of what loving-kindness and compassion are. If it means submitting and taking it, then it’s ridiculous. Why get up in the morning to cultivate that? But if you see it as a source of strength where your own self-worth is going to insist on boundaries, then that is a more correct interpretation of loving-kindness.”2
THE FOUR ENEMIES
Salzberg summarizes the four kinds of enemies that each of us face. “Outer enemies are people who seek to harm us. Inner enemies show themselves when we’re overcome and guided by anger and fear. Then there’s the secret enemy, self-preoccupation or selfishness … and finally there’s the super secret enemy, which is self-loathing and feeling unworthy,” she says.
She teaches that we are to use the outer enemy to help overcome the inner enemies –– and I can’t help but note that in her paradigm, there is only one outer enemy, yet three inner enemies.
“When you have an adversary, someone trying to hurt you, use that as the spark for coming through your own anger and fear to another place,” says Salzberg. “The other place is not weakness and giving in and saying it doesn’t matter or that you don’t count. It’s finding other sources of strength because our anger is going to burn us out eventually, so that is not an effective way to actually make a difference.”3
TAPPING INTO THE INNER WARRIOR
Hate exists. Greed exists. Neither is excusable. So, I look to confront hate not with more hate, but love. I am choosing to follow Salzberg’s advice, to tap into my inner warrior so that no one can make me feel less than I am. Nor do I want to make anyone else feel less than they are –– God’s beloved.
“If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love,” says author, psychologist and former monk James Finley.4
COMING DOWN FROM THE PILLAR
My experience is that most people are good at heart, that they are struggling with their own enemies as much as I struggle with mine. And truth be told, none of us is always right. Or, I know I am not.
As Trina says, this temptation to climb the pillar, as the caterpillar Stripe does, is not a one and done thing.
“I have to get off my little pillars all the time,” says Trina.5 Me too, sister. Me too.
I can be as self-righteous as the best of them. So, I try to take time to understand another’s point of view. To listen. That means sometimes I discover a motivation that I was so sure of was not there at all. This is teaching me not to shoot from the hip. Instead, I try for more careful aim by asking what is needed for the greatest good at this time.
THE LAST WORD
Authentic answers to questions of the greatest good require a clear-sightedness, a careful discernment. And any true discernment … cannot but take us deeper and deeper into the will of God, as the spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton notes: “Any decision-making process that fails to ask the love question misses the point of … discernment.”6
In other words, in trying to answer what is the path of love, I find I need to give up my desire to be so sure, so right, because I know I am not always right.
I also know that telling people they are wrong, that their values do not matter, is not the way to build a relationship. And it is relationships, working together, that are so desperately needed today in this country. Without strong, loving relationships, we are all lost sheep.
I look to do my part by listening, by building bridges, by performing acts of service that show I care. It is the only way I know to follow the path of love. And I pray that in my efforts to be open, to lead with my heart, I will be given the guidance I need to move forward –– such as the wisdom Trina shared with me in recent weeks, so I will give her the last word.
“We (have to) go on and try to have love and have gratitude for what we have,” says Trina. “What else is there?”7
FOR REFLECTION: Think of the times you may have been tempted to climb the pillars that lead nowhere in your life. How were you able to get down? Did a “butterfly” show you the way? Or, did you realize as you neared the top that you simply needed to come down? What was the result?
1 “Claire Mirkowski-Purdy Interviews World Renown Author and Artist Trina Paulus,” Loveland Magazine (October 30, 2024). https://lovelandmagazine.com/claire-mirkowski-purdy-interviews-world-renown-author-and-artist-trina-paulus/
2 Karen Brailsford, “Enlightened Perspectives: Sharon Salzberg Cultivates Loving-Kindness.” Spirituality & Health: A Unity Publication (November/December 2024), 29.
3 Brailsford.
4 James Finley, Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, CD and MP3 (Center of Action and Contemplation, 2013).5 Mirkowski-Purdy.
6 Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006), 117–118.
7 Mirkowski-Purdy.
Top image: Pixbay/gyullche1
Midtext image: Pixabay/vined mind
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
