IN LOVE, IS ALL
Copyright 2007
Love Is Aware
Love notices the wisps of clouds lazing across the vivid sky. It hears the insistent crow in the branches overhead. Love feels the soft warmth of the earth beneath bare feet. It catches the acrid scent of smoke on the breeze. Love savors the fullness of every present moment. It ponders what it is noticing. Love is now.
Love Embraces What Is
Love reverences whatever holds its attention. It honors the frowning face and the tender embrace. Love welcomes the angry glare and the impulse to share. It accepts the last minute change of plans, the heartfelt gratitude of a friend, the emptiness of losing a companion, and the relief of coming home. Love holds all of it – together.
Love Responds
Love engages with whatever it is noticing. It slows down to listen – it speeds up to get finished. Love speaks up when truth wants an ear. It finds solitude when silence calls. Love turns the music off. It changes its tune. Love sings a new song. Love joins in the fray. It gets dirty. It ends things – and it starts over. Love makes choices. Love is a choice.
Love Makes Things Better
Love nurtures what it touches. It fills the need, supports the growth. Love heals the sick, comforts the suffering. It confronts the oblivious, highlights the injustice. Love airs the dirty laundry, owns up to the offense. It forgives the hurt, breaks the destructive pattern. Love joins the party, gets in the game. It offers an understanding gaze. Love encourages a small step forward. It empowers a new way. Love gives life.
Love Is Relational
Love flows from the Lover to the Beloved. It is given and received. Love joins parent and child, spouses, friends, strangers. It cherishes the other as part of oneself. Love dances in the meeting of twinkling eyes. It speaks and listens. Love holds even as it is held. Love receives even as it is given.
Love First Receives
The Lover gives only from the abundance of what has been received. The Beloved is nurtured into overflowing with love. The once comforted now offer comfort. The formerly understood now provide understanding. The one protected from the storm now offers shelter. The vessels of joy turn water in to wine. Blessed are those willing to be loved, they become the Lovers.
Love Holds Feelings
Love feels the meaning of the moment. Love rejoices and grieves, whosever fortune is for good or ill. Love opens its heart to whatever is happening. It slides from whimsy to disdain, from intrigue to daring, from distrust to communion. Love is at home with anger and attraction, with sadness and ecstasy, with fear and contentment. Love relishes the energy in the body at the moment. Love feels everything.
Love Prolongs Pleasure
Love responds to pleasure so that it may last. The Lover joins the Beloved in joy. Their exchange multiplies the moment. Love mirrors the smile, is infected by laughter, gets out on the dance floor, returns the embrace. Love appreciates that pleasure is the fruit and the food of love. It washes away unworthiness and guilt. Love remembers what feels good – and finds it again. Love looks to continue rejoicing.
Love Receives Pleasure
Love turns ‘Beloveds’ into Mystics. It opens the senses, the heart, and the mind to the magic of the moment. Love relishes whatever is simply given. It communes with branches swaying in the breeze, drinks the children’s laughter, contemplates the sunset, absorbs the caress, opens into the emptiness, embraces All That Is. Love marvels at all that is given.
Love Expresses Pleasure
Love turns Lovers into Explorers. It gives the get-up-and-go to those who go for the pearl of great price. Love makes the runner’s high, and the walker’s glow. It gets silly – just for the fun of it. Love infuses the banter, shouts from the mountaintop, throws the party, leaps into the deep end. Love hoards nothing. As a vessel for joy, it fills till it overflows, becoming a river. Love flows through all who are willing to celebrate life. Love pours itself into the enchanted and universal dance of delight.
Love Comforts Pain
Love turns the wounded into Healers. Love is sensitive to distress. It feels with those who suffer. Love enters the feeling to ease the healing. It provides the soft pillow and the kind word. Love sits by the bedside, listens to the woe, walks with the weary, cries with the grieving. It offers a tender touch to the aching heart. Love helps the pain to pass.
Love Protects the Endangered
Love turns the threatened into Guardians. It is fierce in assuring the safety of the Beloved. Love appreciates anger as a protective urge. It carefully considers the nature of the peril and finds a trustworthy response. Even when protective, Love intends no harm. Even so it is free to stand up to injustice, confront betrayal, expose disregard, challenge whatever the source of pain. Love effects changes until safety is restored.
Love Relieves Fear
Love cherishes safety. It stays alert to the wake up call of fear. Love does not get trapped in the future, feeding the thoughts that grow the fear. Love stays present, breathing through the fear, experiencing what is happening now. It holds the fear in calmly centered strength. It takes the action which truly helps to lessen the fear. Love watches the fear pass.
Love Honors Painful Truth
Love calls forth the strength to face the truth. It is not overprotective of the Beloved. Love knows that some growth is painful. It does not diminish the Beloved’s resilience by supporting denial or avoidance. Love gives honest feedback. It says what is difficult to hear. Love finds a way to stand together – and face reality.
Love Lets Go
Love turns the wheel of life and death. It knows that as something new is born, something old dies. Love draws the Beloved close, communes while holding on loosely. It does not addict itself to the illusory one and only good. Love learns that whatever is loved will eventually be lost. Love causes and heals broken hearts. It wholeheartedly grieves what is passing, even as it slowly engages the new life coming to be. Love is always able to let go – and to love again. Love discovers that even as all things pass, love lasts.
Love is Inclusive
Love embraces All That Is – just as it is. It welcomes differences, bridges divides, respects the stranger, honors the enemy. Love values the minority. It parties with tax collectors and sinners, dines with gays and lesbians, walks with the chronically ill, holds hands of different colors. Love respects the wealth of the poor and the poverty of the rich. It gets the ignorance of the smart and the wisdom of the fools. Love is the great equalizer. Love sees and cherishes everything, just as it is.
Love is Divine
Love is all there is. Love creates all, feeds all, feels all, celebrates all, ends all. The universe is Love’s body of work, its ever evolving masterpiece. Love is the Mystery, available to endless discovery. Love reveals itself in every moment of existence. It is the always trustworthy Teacher, the school of personal experience, the way to knowing the ways of God. Love is Divinity in motion – and in stillness. Love is the Goddess renewing life in every moment of awareness. There is no escaping Love, no trying to find it. Love is always present.
Realization
Just being present,
in the moment, in love,
is all.
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