spirit rock

Yesterday afternoon, a couple friends invited us to an afternoon retreat at Spirit Rock (a Buddhist retreat community/center in Marin) for a celebration of LGBT couples, love, and marriage. It was attended by all kinds of couple of different ages, orientations, and anniversaries, as well as some single people. When they asked us to meditate on our purpose for being there, this thought crystallized for me:
My relationship with my partner has profound healing power. This is why I changed my perspective from not wanting to have anything to do with marriage into seeking a commitment and marriage with him. This healing power is visible not only in the way he helped me heal after my bike accident, but in the soothing of some of my deepest scars of fear, anger, and hurt.

On a spiritual level, relationships can be inherently healing in the way people can connect with each other, when people can see each other fully as flawed and fabulous. And just as easily, relationships can be profoundly hurtful if they are blind to human reality, if they ignore or diminish the fabulous, or if they expect perfection. In a recent white anti-racist group I attended, the leader referred to this: Relationships are the only thing that can heal injustices, through sharing the spark of awareness and vision and through organizing to counteract systems of structured injustice.

I think I needed to write that, because there's a lot of scary negative going on in my inbox (thanks to my brother) and a deep struggle going on in my friend EJoye (see her blog for more).