Love

I forget sometimes to preach about love - weird, since it's the one thing that I constantly obsess about. How do we love better? Is it not what we all desire even in our secret hearts? These ties (strings in the San tradition) that binds us together - between family, friends, partners, kindred spirits, familiar strangers and the strangely familiar. How do we make them golden, vibrant, alive? The extraordinary ability of love to uplift, overcome, to give things meaning. How to celebrate, affirm and evolve that? Have I mentioned that my biggest struggles are with myself? With being guided by love, surrendering to love and trusting in the power of love? To not let other interpretations of love dictate mine, to be proactive rather than reactive, to be master of my responses - considered or not? As such even the most sincerest of my approaches comes from a thirst for self-knowledge, a gauging of contribution, an expectation around possibilities. For the caution stands: how do we love others if we can't love ourselves? To love yourself you have to know yourself. Only when knowing yourself can you consciously give of your best. Giving of your best, in my experience, is love best expressed. I can't assure you of favour or reward in this line of thinking. I can only speak to it illuminated in my life. A friend showed me something a religious leader wrote that I thought expressed my motives nicely. When asked what motivates him he replies, and I quote, probably incorrectly, but you'll get the gist: 'The evidence in my own life of God's loving look'. I wouldn't have said it quite the same way, but it is undeniably well put. It is all eventually, essentially about love.  SP 11.02.14