A four-part series on love

Part One

Nov 12, 2024

Over the next four weeks, I’ll be posting a reflection on love every Tuesday.

Outside my window, the season’s first snow is falling. The ground is still warm and green and I doubt much, if any, will stick. It may even turn to rain by the time I’m done writing this short essay. But I was just out there with it for a few minutes, feeling it land wet and cold on my skin, a welcome embrace. “Hello, snow,” I said. And then, I felt as though I’d been woken up.

Over the last week, I’ve been struggling to stay awake. We lost a dear family friend a few days ago, a woman I’ve known since before I could form memories. Several days later, another friend passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly. Then came the election.

I was reminded of how being awake to love often means being equally awake to grief. And how it can be tempting to stay asleep. And how, in closing ourselves off to sorrow, we can close ourselves off to love as well. It’s felt easier over the last couple of weeks to be in a restless, uneasy sleep.

But this morning’s snow opened my heart up again.

The only thing I can fathom that will get us through the time ahead is love. While I will continue to do my part in creating the sorts of institutions I hope to see in the world, political and otherwise, I don’t inherently trust or rely on them. There will be times when those institutions might help and times when they do the opposite. They are, I think, fundamentally unreliable. But we can choose, again and again, every day, to rely on—to stay awake to—love.

Love invites us into wonder, joy, awe, compassion. And yes, love also means awareness of not only our own pain and suffering, but the pain and suffering of others, human beings and more-than-human kin alike. But love is big enough to hold such things, while also offering us a way through. It can be a fire where transformation, change, and possibility are forged. It can be a place of warmth and light where we can simply be. It can be a pathway—infinite pathways, really—connecting us to the world around us and to its many extraordinary beings, with compassion and understanding.

Love does not mean a lack of rigor. It does not mean that we accept blindly or that we don’t hold others accountable. It does not mean inaction, though I think it invites us into many different forms of action and expands our understanding of what action can look like. The practice of keeping our hearts open to love does not mean the absence of anger, frustration, or bewilderment, nor does it mean permission to forgo careful study or self-awareness.

Today, I am reminded that I trust in love. I am reminded that trusting love, choosing love, is a practice that I can (re)dedicate myself to. I’m reminded that I trust you. I trust your heart. Whoever you are and whether or not you will ever read this, I trust your capacity for love. I trust the power of that love. And I believe in the potential of what can happen when we direct that love, not only to our fellow human beings, but to the beings that live and breathe in the living, breathing world around us.

In How to Love, Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “Love is a living, breathing thing. There is no need to force it to grow in a particular direction. If we start by being easy and gentle with ourselves, we will find it is just there inside us, solid and healing.”

This morning’s brief snow, easy and gentle, permitted me a moment to be in the presence of something solid and healing. I’ll keep working to stay there, and to return there when I’ve found I’ve wandered away.

When things feel uncertain and hard and heavy, there are many gifts we can offer to each other and to ourselves, but the most extraordinary one is also the simplest: love.

Stay tuned for three more Tuesday reflections on love. Coming up next week: “The Wisdom of Creatures.”

Mother, Creature, Kin available for pre-order!

You can now pre-order my forthcoming book, MOTHER, CREATURE, KIN: What We Learn from Nature’s Mothers in a Time of Unraveling.

“In prose that teems with longing, lyricism, and knowledge of ecology, Steinauer-Scudder writes of the silent flight and aural maps of barn owls, of nursing whales, of real and imagined forests, of tidal marshes, of ancient single-celled organisms, and of newly planted gardens. The creatures inhabiting these stories teach us about centering, belonging, entanglement, edgework, homemaking, and how to imagine the future. Rooted in wonder while never shying away from loss, Mother, Creature, Kin reaches toward a language of inclusive care learned from creatures living at the brink.”

Writing workshops for the New Year:

(Re)Connecting to Creative Practice: Finding ritual and rhythm in the midst of uncertainty

With everything going on in the world, it can be a challenge to maintain both the joy and the discipline of creative practice, and to remember and re-inhabit it as worthy and valuable. Over three sessions, we’ll explore together ways of reconnecting to our writing as a creative and nourishing practice, weaving together elements of ritual and community.

For the duration of the three-week course, participants will have the option to write together every morning over Zoom. These writing sessions will entail a brief check-in followed by time to write in silence and community.

Dates: January 9th, 16th, 23rd from 7:30-8:30pm EST (plus: optional morning writing sessions from 8:00-9:00am, weekdays from January 9th-23rd)

Cost: Sliding scale, $25-$75

Register HERE.

Writing Creatures:

Is there an animal or plant you’ve been longing to write about? Are you looking for ways to bring more wildness into your writing? Over three sessions, we’ll delve into the world of a creature we’re interested in learning more about, stretch our writing practice across the species divide, and consider how writing can be a space to build bridges of empathy and care with the living world.

Dates & Time: February 6th, 13th, & 20th, from 8:00-9:00pm EST

Cost: Sliding scale, $25-$75

Register HERE.