On giving; and a recipe

I had been thinking about all that I've received on this trip when it struck me that I hadn't thought much about what I had given.

The first layer is simple, mundane.  Three months of my time; a lot of physical, mental and emotional effort;  the comfort of home;  about $9000 when all is said and done; letting go of a job I liked.

Those things don't seem very significant to me.  I'm not sure, but perhaps the most significant thing I have given has been my participation.  Life is a story woven from little things given to others.  From sharing.

I've done what I can to share with an open heart, as open as I can manage.  I still have more to learn.  I hope I have been a boon to the people who's lives have intersected with mine.

Somewhere towards the middle of the Camino, I had a strange dream, about a slave woman.  She wanted to show me where she lived.  I may have been her master.  She was a classic slave woman, big, black, middle aged.  She may have been too poor for clothes.

She took me into the place she lived, a barn.  Many other slaves lived here, with nothing.  At some point, I grabbed her breast.  It came off in my hand.  The woman didn't object, but instead gave it freely, and with good will, even though I had taken it from her.  

She continued to show me around the barn.  She took me into the upper levels.  There an old man was sleeping on the floor, and had nothing besides a blanket.  He offered me a blanket, out of generosity.  

The building began to shake - it was so poorly made and taken care of that the addition of my weight  made it about to collapse.  At some point, I gave the woman her breast back.

The dream was about how I relate to life.  I take without regard for others.  We humans take without regard.  And somehow, life keeps on giving.  Being generous.  But the world around us grows frail, poor, about to collapse.  Unless I learn to ask, to receive, and to be grateful, the world will collapse.  

Our culture treats virtually everything like a slave.  We've told ourselves nothing else has a soul or feelings, and can thus be treated like an inanimate resource to be used, exploited.  We don't realize the peril and poverty we've created.  Willful blindness, the pain is too great. 

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I began this trip asking to learn how to love life.  The other day, a recipe came to me:

1)  Put in everything you have.

2)  Loose it.  (It helps to have someone hold you here)

3)  Recover and realize you somehow have more than you started with.

4)  Repeat.

Somehow, live and love work like that.  Mysteriously.