Tuesday is election day and I will be voting.

I don’t particularly want to. Actually I really don’t want to. But I will. It is the right thing to do. I know this to be intuitively true in my heart, and that is a compass which never steers me wrong.

Quite honestly thinking about going to the voting booth makes me want to skip off in the other direction forgoing the ballot box for more sanguine settings. It would be much easier to pass this election by and avoid confronting the disquiet in my heart. But avoidance on issues of the heart does not truly serve us, and I have learned that it is best to listen to the stories the heart has to tell lest the Universe keep bringing this particular opportunity to learn and grow on my journey back around again.

I figure I am better off putting my courage boots on and stepping up to the booth right now.

You see I have mixed emotions because the person I am voting for is somebody who once meant something very precious and rare to me, and though time, space, and circumstances changed our roles together in this world where we don’t exist within the same spheres nowadays, he happens to be running for local office and asked me for my vote.

And so I will go and vote. In all honesty I don’t really view going to vote as having anything to really do with casting a vote for political reasons. This isn’t about a vote.

For me, it is an act of love.

I am not keen on politics for a lot of reasons. Though I greatly respect those with the true heart of a civil servant who feel called to stand up and lead our nation in any capacity, I find the political world to be more motivated by agendas that represent power, authority, religion, corruption, factions, and choosing an individual’s personal affiliations over seeking to serve the whole of the voices of the people who voted to represent them.

I was part of this world for a very short span of time and can remember feeling like a ghost of a person as I shook hands, smiled, looked pretty, and tried to play the part all while a voice inside of me screamed in silent horror and despair. More compounding to this despair was the fact that I was at a time in my life where I was rapidly outgrowing the world I had internally constructed for myself, an Alice in Wonderland who drank from the bottle and started growing at such a rapid pace she no longer fit into the house she occupied.

I was watching myself destruct from the inside out as my limbs expanded and broke through the walls of that house, my head popping out the roof, until I felt so overgrown I could not figure out how to shrink myself back down to the person I used to be so I could fit the space I previously occupied.

Sometimes you simply cannot stop change.

At the time, I felt horribly unseen and emotionally bereft in my heart and soul as I struggled to make sense of where my place was in either my internal or external world. I have since learned that you cannot expect others to see you if you do not first see yourself, and that our outer world is a reflection of our inner world.

I did not fit in with myself.

No wonder I felt like I didn’t fit into this Jekyll and Hyde beast of a political world that has fruitlessly struggled to find any integration with it’s own identity resulting in a giant schism between two sides that at times are so catty, petty, and hateful to one another one wonders how we can ever hope to accomplish anything when we refuse to step outside of our own perspective and continue to willingly exchange control and power for hope of reconciliation.

At times, it seems there is little room for the heart in politics.

Yet here we are in the middle of a national debate that is all about the heart. It is about love and choice and people fighting for their equal right to express their love as they see fit while the other side stands there insisting they do not have that right for it threatens the moral fabric this country was purportedly founded on. As if systems and structures were responsible for morality instead of a person’s heart.

In many ways the issue of gay marriage seems so obvious that I wonder why we are even talking about it? What a ridiculous notion that we are in debate right now on whether or not we should grant some of our citizens the ability to marry while others can freely partake of that right and head on over to Vegas right now to be married by morning. Marriage has become a privilege instead of a right and rights shouldn’t be privelaged to certain people.

If you are a human being then you deserve equal rights.

The right to be treated as everyone else. The right to deserve lawful recognition in a country that prides itself on our diversity. The right to simply speak, act, think, direct, and captain their lives as they see fit. This isn’t an issue of marital rights, this is an issue of human rights. It is an issue of love.

It is Easter today. As I sit here writing, I consider that they gray sky and chilly spring temperatures outside my window will provide a monochromatic contrast to the bright array of Easter dresses that will be parading around town. This is a day that means so many different joyful things to so many people. It is a time filled with great love and hope for those who celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

One wonders what Jesus would do if he walked through the middle of the two sides of debate in our nation right now. I suspect he would take one look at both of them and this whole chaotic mess we have turned marriage into, and simply walk away from the whole thing inviting any from either side, who wished to follow him, to go sit down and have a beer and talk about love.

Real love. Authentic love. Divine love. Vast love. Deep love. Limitless love.

Unconditional love.

Love that we have attempted to fence into the neat little parameters of marriage, yet has nothing to do with systems and institutions. Love that we are here on earth to learn about through the act of loving and being loved.

It is a love that we attempt to live out every single day. It is the love we seek to nurture in our families, in our relationships, in our homes. It is the little bundle of fur curled up at my side who looks at me with all the love in the world in his soulful eyes since I am HIS whole world (well, me and food), and the love I reciprocate considering myself extraordinarily blessed to be given such a loyal sidekick to slowly walk beside me in this world on his tiny arthritic old legs.

It is the flamboyant and fabulous friends I have who are marrying this summer having risked and sacrificed much in order to be with one another.

It is the laughter, light, and life in the room last night as two brightly dressed soulmates ate the cake of the day and danced in the middle of a restaurant.

It is the elder of a nearby church who reached out to a very lost and lonely girl during her divorce as she watched her friend list slowly drop day after day after day, and who simply “friended” her, remaining her friend ever since because he was trying to live out his convictions of love.

It is the church going, conservative, incredibly supportive Mum who listened when her daughter told her that if she wanted to support her to simply love her and allow her rainbow, free spirited, highly intuitive, heart following, wild child of a daughter to blaze her own path in this life.

It is the dear friend who would walk through fire and burning coals all the way to the ends of the earth if it meant protecting and loving his children.

It is the friend, the scientist, who mentors her students, campaigns for social change, cares very deeply for the environment, and is all about goodness, honesty, integrity and wearing her heart on her sleeve.

It is the roommate who rescues stray animals, adores her nieces, sat with a friend at the pet er in the middle of night when the dog came down with the worst case of disgusting lice the vet had ever seen, and who should be allowed equal rights to marry if she so chooses someday.

It is showing up at an election booth to vote for the man with whom you once shared a heart and a life, and who has now asked for your vote. Because despite how personal views may differ, you know he is made of honest character, has a pure heart, and was made to be a strong civil servant. And you hope that in casting this one tiny drop of love into the greater ocean he is also connected to, that it will create a ripple effect of love.

When we act in love, we create space for more love in our lives.

Everyday people from all creeds, backgrounds, and walks of life are living out love in the most authentic way that they know. It’s funny, because I think that is exactly what Jesus did.

And if he were here right now I think his compassionate gaze would extend to the masses of people who will show up on Sunday to worship and rejoice and tell them that while it is good to gather, celebrate, and remember, that he will not be in church on Sunday but will be out in the world loving people.

I think he would tell them they are here to walk a path of love and that many are missing the boat, so blinded by the shackles of self righteousness and religious fervor they cannot see the chains clasped around their inert feet keeping them imprisoned and unknowing as tiny drops of his ever present love try and trickle through the walls they have erected around their heart.

I think he would tell people to smile more at those around them. To get off their phones, turn off their computers, shut down their televisions and simply sit and be present with the people who are in their life.

I think he would tell people to stop spouting rhetoric about what he purportedly said and start speaking the truths that are laid on their hearts when they really take the time to listen.

I think he would tell people about his story of love and ask us what ours are in return.

I think he would tell people that he isn’t concerned what love looks like, but he is concerned that people love.

Today represents a love story for me, and I intend to celebrate spring, resurrection, joy, new life, new beginnings, and love with the sacred feel of the ground beneath my grateful running feet, surrounded by the ever present vigilant trees and soft peace of the open air.

As always, I will talk to the Universe and hear her whisper back as we converse on matters of life, death, rebirth, the spirit, love, and the path of the heart. There will be lots of celebration today with friends and family and warm, good food as well as a slow meandering walk with the best teacher of unconditional love that there is, Dog.

And I will vote on Tuesday because my heart tells me it is the right thing to do, and because Life has given me an opportunity to live an act of love.

With so much Love in the world, I wonder how we can do anything less than simply receive it, act it, live it, be it?

Like Jesus did.

Happy Easter World. May today bless us with faith, hope, joy, and peace. And as always may we do our best to walk the path of love.