Tribe and heart are amazing things.

I come from a line not so different from many.  In the growing-up years of the generation before me, feelings were kept tightly held.  Like all things kept in the dark of self, contained feelings made for inner roil and outer censorship.

And then, through the soul-task that is living, feelings get named and shared and lives and hearts are changed forever more.

As she lay dying of cancer, aware beyond a doubt that her days were numbered and her heart desirous of open, my aunt said to her adult daughter four words that thrum yet in my soul:  Love is a miracle.

Love is a miracle.

Miracle is.

I stood tonight at the airport waiting for the arrival of my son.  He has been in New Orleans working for AmeriCorps.  I haven’t seen him since Christmas.  As I waited I was witness to the arrival of a man coming home after serving for over a year in Afghanistan.  I watched miracle as his family swooped him up and held onto his precious and whole flesh.  Theirs were not the only weeping eyes.  Those of us who bore witness wept along with them.

And then my son was there and my arms were filled with his sweet being and my heart near broke with the miracle of loving.

Love is a miracle.  We get to live it.  My aunt spoke its power to her beloveds and her words bespeak the ways she became willing to apprentice herself to the art of unclenching.

It is art for the courageous, this thing called loving.

My tribe is courageous.