What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Weighing the Lessons of Love

What does love have to do with it? Everything!  If I want to live in a peaceful world I have learned that I have to be loving-everywhere, every place, with everyone.    I’ve been weighing the lessons of love this month when so much has gone on in my life, from the marriage of my nephew to miracles of reconciliation with my family, from the sudden death of a beloved sister, to saying no to a man who wanted to love me.

What is This Thing Called Love?

What is love? Why do all people, even hardened killers, dream about love? Why do so many people despair of ever finding love and kill themselves when they don’t? Who knows how many human conflicts are rooted in the desire to be affirmed, seen and honored, a hunger that would be immediately sated in the presence of love.  To be treated with kindness and tenderness is, I believe, a universal yearning, counterbalanced by one thing-a great fear of the vulnerability that comes when we are undefended and open to hurt as we were at some point in our past.     

A Wordless Yet Full Emptiness

Love, I have discovered is spaciousness, a simple emptiness and fullness at the same time.  I sit and watch the rains of Seattle fall on the tall pines outside my windows. The earth just is as it is; it does not have to do anything or be any particular way.  Winds blow. Storms howl. Flowers grow. People die. There is such beauty in this, it takes my breath away. All things are held in this spaciousness, including grief at my sister’s loss, all the tragedies of the world’s enmities, my yearning to be loved by a man who really sees me, my profound love for my siblings, the disparities and injustices in the world, all of it.

The Blocks to Love’s Presence

What are the blocks to love’s presence? Old stories from the past, resentments, inauthentic ways of being, the need to dominate or control others, the need to be right, making other people wrong-anything which gets in the way of seeing and honoring others as beings who yearn for the fullness of life.  How wonderful that we have the simple tools of forgiveness and reconciliation , the exquisite ability to see again rightly those beloveds into whose company we were born! Let it all go . . .  why carry  that old hard-eyed, hard-hearted way of seeing?

We Do Not Have to be Saints

It is so much easier to love people as they are and as they are not.  And yes, sometimes, for our own safety we simply have to say no to relationships that, despite our best efforts, do not work.  We do not have to be Mother Teresas.

Love is the Birthright of Every Human Being

This is my stand for myself and the world: I am ready to give and to receive the most profound love to a life partner and to anyone who would journey with me along this path to peace. Every single one of us can have the experience of being honored, accepted and seen as their highest and best self.  Every human should have the delight of being loved in this way.

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