On Valentine’s Day Weekend, Take Care of Your Heart  

      

Many people are celebrating the alleged end of the ICE surge in Minnesota. We, the people of Minnesota, are skeptical. We are still watching as people continue to get detained. And we are still helping our neighbors any way we can.

Amidst this occupation, I keep thinking how we need to take care of our own tender hearts, hearts that have been broken over and over and over here in the Twin Cities. It is accepted wisdom that we cannot take care of others if we aren’t taking care of ourselves. 

Sometimes, taking care means noticing small pieces of beauty and pockets of kindness, even when we are surrounded by immense cruelty. 

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Our dog, Finn the Wheaten, is now a little over a year old. He’s impulsive, joyous, friendly, and utterly unable to let us be in a room without him. He’s destroyed four throw pillows and one small piece of quarter-round from our baseboards. We work on dog training with a coach, Courtney, who is kind, soft-spoken, has never raised her voice to Finn, encourages us as Mick and I relearn (Finn is our fourth dog) the basics tweaked for Finn’s personality. 

What always gets to me is when Finn bursts into the training area full speed, a look on his face that can only be happiness. He learns quickly, is totally treat-motivated. After an hour of nonstop training exercises, we can all see that he is exhausted. 

But his eyes when he looks at any of us are beautiful. Innocent. Trusting that no harm will come to him from us. 

This trust from Finn is one thing that makes my heart happy.

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Every morning, I throw open the bedroom curtains to a view of the eastern sky, trees across the way, a quiet street with middle class houses. Now, in the second half of winter, the sky blooms pink, orange, red a little earlier. 

A few days ago, walking Finn before breakfast, Mick and I realized birds were singing. They are courting, singing their look at me – I’ve got what you want songs. 

Light and song. Opening moments of beauty we can find daily if we get out of bed to meet them. Another jolt of joy.

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Throughout the occupation of Minnesota, many people around here have left up their outdoor holiday lights. I’ve never seen so many colorful lights left up this long past New Year’s Day. It made me think that a little twinkly cheer is something we could also do in our house, so we took the tiny white lights off the small tree in our dining room and strung one strand along the top of our china cabinet and took the other strand to put around the fireplace downstairs.

Those dainty little lights never fail to make me smile. They give off more light than I realized.

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A few weeks ago, we hosted a Sunday morning breakfast for some of our neighbors. Mick and I figured that people needed a little respite during this time, a little break from the nonstop news of ICE agents, detainments, protests, damage to neighborhoods and businesses, fear, anger. We weren’t sure if people would come, but we tossed the invitation out there and asked people to consider bringing food donations that we volunteered to take to a local collection site.

Everyone we invited said yes. Beautiful kindness. Beautiful neighbors.

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Earlier this month, Mick and I went to see the Minnesota Orchestra perform Pink Floyd music. Mick got these tickets back in August and gave them to me for my birthday because I’m a long-time Pink Floyd fan. Randy Jackson (formerly with the band Zebra), who sang lead vocals, took a moment to give a heartfelt shoutout to Minneapolis in this moment. Everyone in the audience got to their feet, clapping and grateful to be acknowledged for what we’ve endured here. Some of us got choked up, proof that our emotions are just under the surface. Our hearts are raw. 

But hearing someone say out it loud from their own heart will never get old.

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As snow melts into rivulets running down our streets, as the sky brightens earlier and darkens later, and the promise of spring unfurls, perhaps this occupation really will end. 

But doing the work of being compassionate, of stopping cruelty everywhere, is always going to be there. It will always tug at our tender hearts, demanding we step up.

And we will.

Header image courtesy of pixabay.com