Love is Sifted Flour

Love is fine white flour after it has been sifted. I remember baking with my mother, in the days before pre-sifted flour, before pre-sifted life. The best part was getting to use the canister sifter with the silver handle. Both hands would grasp the holder and begin the squeeze and release motion that would force the flour to breathe. This resulted in a soft rhythmic metal beat, a world groove percussive base, good sifting music from a curiously shaped maraca.

Love is what's left when we've contracted and released around some impurity and then let it go. Sitting in our bag of life, like flour, we get compacted and weighed down by unwanted clumps of non-love. I was always surprised to see only a few tiny white pebbles left on the fine mesh after all the squeezing. This was the "stuff" too full of itself to get through. Rigid thoughts and attitudes, coarse judgments and "stuff" with arms crossed in protection were not allowed to leap into the soft and fluffy white pile on the other side.
In the game of sifting, love would always win and spread everywhere,
making more of itself in the process. It's hard to control where the sifted goods go. From stuck to flowing, the volume of flour after sifting always made a bigger mountain. Now we can use the love flour for good measure, spoon by spoon, careful not to pack it or overwhelm it. Love can make such a difference in the texture of life that we're making. We can sift our experiences as they come to us and give love more volume, making it easier to incorporate into our choices, giving us lighter, fluffier results.

Copyright © Bentley Kalaway 2009