I spoke to my mother on the phone this afternoon. I had missed her call earlier in the week when she had hoped to persuade me to come home for a visit. And when she expressed that wish today I had to decline,  due to a busy schedule in the next weeks. She was disappointed and so I listened,  as best I could, providing a presence across the phone.  She spoke of the things of her day and the up’s and down’s of her week. Mainly simple things, a way of masking greater concerns. My job was to be silent. No greater work for those moments.

Ironically this week I had thought of helping in a bigger way. Sometimes I can think that life and support means grand gestures, a greater endeavour. And I spend my time planning for that in the future, to reach out more. However, what I realize this weekend is that the bigger picture can easily distract and become a way of avoiding. Even something as simple as kindness can take on  proportions that are not human. It misses the real family member who needs us. And then it is no longer love but rather our own day dreams pulling us away.

Real love encourages us to embrace the ordinariness of life. Whatever so distracts us from seeing and loving the familiar of the daily has the potential to be unhealthy. These distractions can appear in all shapes and sizes, many of them wholesome aspirations. However, they put our hopes for life elsewhere – on some shelf we may never reach – and pull us away from what is under our noses.

What is love? It is such a deep need of the human heart. Can it be as simple as being present to one another as fully as we can? I remember speaking to an old monk in Ireland once, who told me that life was quite straightforward really. It consisted of loving, he said, to the best of our ability, those whom we encountered each day. The people who were in our life at that moment.  Most of our days offer these simple encounters, little things –  dropping people off at the airport, making lunch and telling each other that things will work out. Maybe that is the essence of this life that I love – we are here,  we have each other, and do the best we can with what little time we are given. No dramatic gestures, no spectacular love, just ordinary stuff like partners, friends, mothers, sisters, phone calls and listening in silence.