By love I do not mean any natural tenderness, which is more or less in people according to their constitution; but I mean a larger principle of the soul, founded in reason and piety, which makes us tender, kind and gentle to all our fellow creatures as creatures of God, and for his sake.
*William Law, English Christian mystic (b. 1686)
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Daphne Rose Kingma, poet, psychotherapist, teacher of relationships, tells of an experience in Hawaii. Daphne was weary, after a huge fire in her house. She was lying on the beach and did not want to have conversation with anyone. A little girl with a pinwheel came to her. The little girl asked, "Can I sing you a song?" The girl sang a beautiful song about friendship. The final line was, "So I'm singing you this song and I want to be your friend, will you be my friend, too?"
Daphne gave the following comment on meeting the little girl...
It was an absolutely exquisite gift. I will never see her again, I don't know her name, but we had an experience of deep connectedness and true love in that moment on the beach. There are hundreds of these moments in life that are so tiny that they don't register on this chart that we've all built about what love is. We think love has to look a certain way, have a certain outcome. But we're constantly gifted with such moments, experiences that are just breathtaking in their purity and their absolutely consecrated perfection.
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In simple transactions of love the ordinary is seen to be sublime. Is it possible that at times our expecting love to arrive into our lives in a certain way blocks our seeing how love is present already? We might do well to pray to see love as it shows up in so many apparently ordinary, but sublime, ways. Likewise, we might do well to celebrate the small ways we are blessed to love others daily. Yes, see and celebrate the love received and the love given, both and equally.
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*Garden of Buddha, Zeeshan Sattar, Flickr
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*Lotus of the Heart is a Work of Arem Nahariim-Samadhi ~ a Hospice Chaplain, interspiritual author, writer, poet, and bicyclist. He is someone in love with Life and inviting others to that same ecstasy of Love ~ and, by the way, herein is nothing he claims as his own.
