Quiet is Loud

As kids we all loved my Grandma Theroff.  Why did we love doing chores for her? We never did anything spectacular like go to an amusement park or go anywhere outside the farm pond in the back acre. It was utterly mundane by description but somehow engaging and real. There was a quiet attention about her that made you feel like you were important to her. A gift I realize now she shared with a large swath of relatives.

Grandma Theroff helping zip up

Grandma left this world just before the turn of the millennium. In recent years I’ve come to feel her quiet presence more in my life. The quiet can be loud in their silence. Her life first came clear to me out of the chaos of Pat’s passing. Till then, I had been struggling with everything: work, fatherhood, relationship, film-making, geo-politics and the house. All things that to grandma had seemed so easy (though I don't remember her discussing geo-politics or film). The whole world knew to stay away from me because I was busy. And truthfully, I was busy with everything except the thing that truly mattered: my heart.

The gift of loss may be to honor our emptiness as pointing toward our source. But that can take some time to realize when the loss is so close....years. For me the loss had mounted up to a point where it was no longer tolerable and I erupted in a force of reckoning that would not stop questioning myself or the universe. In the past I had swallowed such pain or confusion and called it strength. -A fake smile to support my loved ones. That strategy avoids growth and sets us on the path of greater and prolonged heartbreak.  To hide our longing for this love is the same as denying the love outright. To deny our longing is to deny our own connection to the force of love in which we live. This ocean. It is to ignore the path to the center of our being. This time, I held on to the love and let everything else burn in the fire of that love. Grandma Theroff began to emerge.

 Grandma as a Mom in the 1920's

Hope is a ground from which we see our possibility -from which we see our future.  In looking back at Grandma, I began to see her motivation: "Is it motivated by love?" Asking this has made my journey spontaneously clear. The heart leads.  It's in her mission to have a good home to share love with her family in. It was our pleasure to help her set the table because to her, this was all part of that walking prayer of love. -a prayer for all of our futures. It was not a task, but an act of building, of setting the stage. Even cleaning the house becomes an act of love when done with intention. It can be a prayer for all who enter as well as ourselves. The ordinary becomes extraordinary when it is done for love. So nowadays I spend a lot more time tending to the home life with my 5 year old and we are all much happier. It's focused love for me and focused play for him. We are building a place to grow in.  Nurturing the home as a place to grow is more important than roller-coasters and water slides. We still swim when we can, but only after we have taken care of the home base. We've made room for quiet growth at home, room for the heart.

-Kevin