What is Love?

Along with learning to live well, learning to love is one of my primary goals.

But what is love? I've been asking this question for a few months since the dissolution of my last relationship. What is it that I really want?

Everyone is searching for love, yet we seem to know instinctively that it's really inside us. Still we seek for it everywhere. Will I know it when I find it? We wonder. Have I known true love in my life or is what I'm seeking even out there?

I've known my share of infatuations. I've felt in love. But I wonder if I've ever truly loved.

All of these uncertainties and questions cloud my view of what is or is not reality. Yet I know that for me, the major objective of my life is to love. And the more I tune in to what I instinctively know about love, the more I fight off the wolves of my own fear regarding this unknown wilderness.

It's the "...but what if...?" questions that get me.

True love is ever-expanding and unlimited. But what if no one returns my love?

Love is not a feeling or emotion it is a way of being. But what if I never feel loved?

Love is complete surrender. But what if someone takes advantage?

Love is absolute trust. But what if someone betrays that trust?

Love is defenseless and unconditional. But what if it is never returned?

Love is knowing all the questions and choosign to love anyway.

Living Well

One of my primary goals is to learn to live well.

Learning to live is a process. The only way to learn to live is to go through it. But to expand beyond existence to living--and living well--is a true challenge that requires focus and discipline.

My hope is that soon, the focus and discipline will create habits of what, at this point, seems unnatural and soon I will find myself living well, naturally.

At first, it seems like all work, but then there are small victories where I realize that I'm fulfilling my objective--through the process--and that I am living a well life.

It's then that I realize that I'm also experiencing happiness, joy and peace...and they all seem to be the byproducts of the effort I have exerted to learn how to live a well-lived life.

I find that living well is a daily--even momentary--choice. But it is worth the effort and the rewards are eternal.

The Fear of Questioning Everything

The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.
I didn't really struggle much with my sexuality prior to coming out to myself. I was so far in the back of the closet, I think I remember visiting one afternoon with a faun named Tumnus. Basically, I was in another world, psychologically, and that probably preserved my sanity growing up.

I never allowed myself to much consider the feelings and thoughts of my own heart and what it really meant to who I was as a person.

After coming out to myself, I reconciled my faith and sexuality fairly seamlessly in a matter of two or three months. There was about a 20-something year prep period for that sudden realization, however.

One of the things I have struggled a bit with is challenging and questioning everything I believe.

Over the last weeks, I have been reading M. Scott Peck's classic, The Road Less Traveled. Toward the end of the book, the author makes this insightful observation.

The road to spiritual growth, however, lies in...distrusting what we already
believe, by actively seeking the threatening and unfamiliar, by deliberately
challenging the validity of what we have previously been taught and hold dear.

As I mentioned in the previous post, many of us struggle with this process because in normal religious training, we're often discouraged from questioning authority.

Think about this, though. God does not need you to protect Him from your own questioning. Truth is never threatened. Men and the power with which they influence others is threatened.

In fact, God seems welcoming of our questions and uncertainties. Try me. Test me. Prove me. This is His plea--over and over again. Why?

God yearns for you and you alone. He does not need to manipulate you. He loves you.

Free will. The sincerest test of true love, and the most benificent gift of grace.

What is Love?

What is love? How do I know it?

I know in my own life, what I have experienced as love in a myriad of relationships has been almost universally mis-identified and misunderstood.

In the section on Love in his book The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

Later he contends that "true love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed."

(Love) is a committed, thoughtful decision.

He continues: "The common tendency to confuse love with the feeling of love allows people all manner of self-deception."

This truth hit me like a sledge hammer. Nearly all the drama in my relationships has been caused by my confusion of "the feeling of love" with love itself. I still am not sure of all the implications of this new understanding, but I am spending some time really thinking about this.

All kinds of questions pop up about the importance of "chemistry" and the "feelings" and "emotions" that make up our modern concept of love. I am growing as I develop my own understanding of love and from that understanding, choose what experience I want for my life.

What is love? Perhaps the poet says it best. Love is a many-splendored thing.

Silence--the Voice of Peace

Shhhh....

Silence. Where do you go to experience it?

To me, silence is as the evasive happiness...the more you seek it and strive for it the less likely you are to find it. When you think about it, silence is only known by the sounds that interrupt it.

Yet silence is the language that speaks peace.

I live near a large art museum and it has large gardens and sculpture gardens on the grounds. Often, I will go there in the evenings to pray and to read.

Last night, I sat next to a fountain and closed my eyes in prayer and meditation. I focused on the sounds...each individual tone that made up the music of the trickling water. But then I tried something else, I consciously tried to listen to the the silence within the trickling water fountain.

Peace.

It filled my spirit. Gratitude soon followed and overflowed my soul. And Love seemed to sit beside me as I sat there.

Silence, Peace, Gratitude and Love--happy companions for a wonderful life.

Surprise of Suffering

There is a surprise of suffering in love.

I am learning to love. I am learning what true love is and what it means to love every day. The more I learn of Love, the more I am drawn to it as the fundamental state of my being as a human being.

But I realize that the "struggle" of love comes from the conditioning that I have absorbed for so many years--from infancy--to do and be what others expect of me, and not do what and be who I was created to be.

So I have been surprised with suffering. It's nice. And alliterated. But what do I mean by this?

I was surprised to realize that there is no distance of space or time in love. There is no separation really. And it's perhaps a bit metaphysical or spiritual for some, but I have found it to be the truth.

The suffering of the one I love grips my heart and I feel it deep in my soul. Even though the suffering may not be my own and even though I know that each of us is responsible for his or her own pain and suffering, I feel the pain my loved one feels.

Perhaps I am finally beginning to understand the words I memorized so easily and thoughtlessly as a child. Perhaps I finally understand the meaning of "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2)