Some Thoughts on Love

Combing through my journal entries from the last several months, I stitched together these passages, which all offer some reflections on the theme of love.

Today, the grass is grown tall again. Today, the fields are ripened with grain. Today, the lilies are sending their perfume into the heady air and you’re going to find out that you are loved.

…

When you try to avoid the thing you love, you end up wrestling with yourself. You effectively ask yourself to forget the thing you most want to remember, and to deny the thing you most desire.

But, sometimes, there is merit in such denial. The denial is not good because it causes you to forsake your love. No, instead, it is valuable only to the extent that it refines and purifies your love, separating it out from lesser effects and commending it into the hands of GOD.

GOD is never dishonored by real Love – for His nature is Love, and any reflection of His nature is good.

…

Five hundred years ago, the people of your homeland were arguing over a simple question: who should be the one to tell the others what it means to Love? The silly thing is that no one can tell you how to love, except for the Lord, Who has written the instructions on your heart.

Each person must find it in himself to contemplate the direction of his love and discover what its best expression might be. Then, armed with this knowledge, he must commit himself to the daily living-out of what he learned; he must make his love a reality, rather than a notion left orphaned in the recesses of his mind.

For the truth is that Love consists not in feeling great things – although feelings add beauty and grace, and are certainly a blessed part of the experience – but rather in dying to self and giving your heart in service to the one you love.

What I mean is – you mustn’t worry that your love is lacking if you fail to experience a certain feeling you expected to have.

Rather, you must look at the habits of your life and the interior state of your soul to guide you into an assessment – or reflection – of your love.

Simply put, you know you have loved when you look into your soul and your soul confirms this love – and when you look at the decisions and actions of your will and your life, and these resolutions and efforts match the directives of your soul.

GOD will tell you whom and how you are to love, if you ask Him. We are indeed called to love everyone, but we are called to love certain people in special ways – so we must be clear and clean and honest enough to hear GOD’s desires and surrender to them in trust.

…

Self-giving is the pinnacle of love. Dying to self is the only way to know the depth of GOD’s holy Love.

…

Dancing in the snow,
you felt it imperative to announce your love to the wind –
and breathe out the cool air of your constant desire.

…

If it hurts to think about the people you love, it is because they have left themselves inside of you. They have taken part of their heart and fused it with your own. When they suffer, so do you – and when you long for them, they feel this longing as if it came from their own heart (which, in a sense, it does).

You can see, then, how hard it is to love – you are not entering into peaceful country where all is calm and quiet (though, of course, this is the grace that lies at the center of things). You are leaving the safe ground of comfort and familiarity and walking into terrain where all is lost and all is gained. Your heart nearly explodes with the surge of emotion and desire inside; and your will – to serve, to know, to give yourself – never sleeps. Why enter into such lands unless you are prepared to lose it all in the name of Love?