Sunday, August 10, 2014

Love

Today, I had planned to write about Love, imagining an exuberant piece on its joys and glories. But yesterday arrived and brought with it a swell of sadness.

By noon, work had taken me to a far~away mountain town to sit with five grieving women and tell them that their beLoved coworker died, not in an accident as they had been informed, but of suicide.

At dinnertime, my husband and I joined our community in a memorial for a five~year old child, offering what surely was scant support to parents gripped by a cruel and jagged grief.

In the evening, we attended a concert with a dear friend whose sorrow over the death of his wife of 69 years has burrowed deeply into his heart. And my father is just 13 weeks gone.

I have no complaints about my day. I wished to be no place other than where I was. But yesterday's events shifted the focus of today's musings. It is Love amidst the pain of life that interests me now. 

There is a Celtic saying, “We live in the shelter of each other.” When life’s harshness pierces us through, Love is often what makes it bearable. Simple presence. Touch. Listening. Bearing witness, soul to soul.

Yet even when we're alone, Love is there, too. This morning, amid an avalanche of technological problems that has me working from three separate computers~~don’t ask!—I was primed for a meltdown. I took to my cushion instead. I sat, stilled my thrashing thoughts, opened, and was, finally, soothed.

It was Love I opened to. In 1 John 4:8 we are told that God is Love. That Love, though, is not passive. It is a Love that infuses, envelops, holds, heals, and calms. God, as Buckminster Fuller wrote, is a verb.

We become expressions of that verb when we open and allow Love to not merely move us, but to move through us and out into the world. We drink it in in order to pour it back out.

Even when we don’t live up to this potential, Love waits. When I did finally melt down during a disagreement with my husband, it was Love that restored our bond and brought us back together again.  

Love shelters. Love envelops. Love soothes. Love restores. All verbs. All Love. All Lovely, indeed.

Love, Love and more Love for you and your day!

Loanne Marie

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Beatles had a song - All You Need Is Love - at least I think it was them. Anyway, how true it is. Love to you and yours.

Leia Marie said...

Yes, it was The Beatles. One of my favs! Thanks for reading and for writing.

Anonymous said...

Thank you,dear Loanne, for another beautiful reminder. Above my bathroom sink I have a framed needlepoint message made by and given to me by a life-long friend : "Teach only LOVE for that is what you are." (from A Course in Miracles) A side-note, my husband was recently diagnosed with pretty serious prostrate cancer. He'll be receiving 40 direct beam radiation treatments in the next 8 weeks. Thank you for the Celtic saying, "We live in the shelter of each other." Ah, yes.
xoxo Marsha S.

Loanne Marie said...

Thank you for that Course in Miracles quote, Marsha. It is a gem. And good wishes streaming your way~~and your husband's! Maybe we could envision those radiation beams as Love Light. Ah yes, it does come in many forms.

Anonymous said...

ITS DEATH THAT MADE YOU SEE LOVE MORE ISNT IT??? WHEN YOU FIND THAT LOVE AND IT CAN BE ANY KIND OF LOVE,LIKE,SISTER LOVE,FATHER LOVE,MOTHER,BROTHER,HUSBAND ECT....I ONCE FOUND A LOVE OF A CARING PERSON AND IT GOT TAKEN AWAY THEY DIDNT DIE THEY HAD MOVED ON,YET I WAS ALONE..I TRIED TO MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND THEN BUT WHATS WILD ABOUT IT IS MY LOVE FOR THIS PERSON GREW EVEN MORE AFTER I UNDERSTOOD WHY THEY LEFT.LOVE BRINGS MANY EMOTIONS AND WE ALL REALIZE IN DIFFERENT WAYS,IVE SEEN IT IN DEATH AND IN THE LIVING ITS A VERY,VERY STRONG THING THIS WORD OF LOVE......YOUR THE BEST LOANNE,THANK YOU FOR SHARING........

Loanne Marie said...

And thank you for reading and for writing. Yes, love in all its expressions is the one true thing, isn't it? Love is never wasted. Love, it seems to me, loves through us and moves out into the world. It is the force that expresses itself in the ways you mentioned. How delightful to be the vehicle of such Love! And death~~as well as loss of love of any kind~~can bring gifts our way.

Marilyn said...

Your column is a wonderful reminder of the fact that love is all around us, and that we can allow--or will--it to flow through us. Perhaps when we can't find it within us, we can simply dip into the river of love. I like that! I also got a strong sense of the way you are connected to your small community, and how you all hold each in love. Thank you for all of this.

Loanne Marie said...

And thank you for writing! I agree with you completely. Love is there for the asking, tho that isn't meant to minimize the pain of life or the difficulty of those times when we cannot seem to touch it. For me, this is where faith comes in. Even when I CAN'T find Love, I can choose to remember it's there~~and commit to not berating myself for not having an experiential sense of it. At those times, it helps me to remember one of my core beliefs~~that this learning, this coming to experience Love in the midst of everything, is precisely what we're here for. No reason to be surprised or despairing that I don't have it all yet. A work in progress we are!

Loanne Marie said...

Darn! Meant to share in that last entry that Marilyn wasn't able to post her comment~~some zafu snafu!~~so she sent it to me to post for her. Please, don't hesitate to do likewise.