Like many people (judging from stories and the way they talk) I grew up thinking that love is something that’s negotiated between people. I went around with a desire to love, looking for some kind of a permission – someone to love me back, some sense of spark that if I were to shoot an arc of love across, the circuitry would be completed in another person, and we would be in love.
There was a boy I knew who seemed promising in this regard. A few glances, a few things said to each other, seemed to me like connected circuitry. It was like a promise that there could be more – that we could have this kind of relationship. My hope was encouraged by a few near misses, and I came, perhaps largely through constructs of my imagination, to believe that we were soul mates.
Life happened differently. We never did have a real relationship with each other, and I went on to other loves, marriage, family. But deep in thought, I still held that unfinished connection. I still had a little fantasy that somehow the courses of our lives would change and we would come together. I would occasionally have dreams about him, but they were always marked by his absence. I would be among people he knew, or in a house that was his, and I was thinking I might see him, but I never did. Then last spring I had a dream in which I did see him, and he offered to take me sailing. The offer still wasn’t fulfilled in the dream, but the fact that it was made was very satisfying to me.
After I woke up, I had a realization from that dream. It was that the piece of unfinished connection that I felt wasn’t what I had thought it was. It wasn’t a sign from fate that some part of my destiny had been tragically unfulfilled. It wasn’t a very foolish construct in my mind where I was imagining something that was never there. It didn’t even have anything to do with the person in question. It was something I had done, and it was an act of love. I had opened my heart to whatever this person was, and had kept it open. It was something I could do any time, for anyone. It didn’t require their permission or participation. When I realized that this was so, I felt the circuit connect itself in me, and I was aware of the power of my love, and that it is a good thing for me to do. I was also able to feel an unfettered love for this man, and for his wife and kids whom I’d never met. There was no need for me to be involved in their lives at all. It just was.
Last summer, while on vacation, I did see this man again, and did meet his wife and kids. We talked for maybe about fifteen minutes. It felt very satisfying to do so. The next day I took a bike ride, in the fresh-washed after-storm early morning, along the seaside and through the town and out across the fields to the beach, where I was the only one there with the brilliant blue of sky, clouds, and water. I walked, holy and barefoot, on the beach, and received a compelling message from the vastness about the nature and presence of God.
Then I went back to my bike and rode home. All the way riding, in both directions, I felt a big halo of amazing love all around me. It was like a golden sphere around me, that I could almost see.
It stayed with me for days, though it was sometimes under the surface. In fact, in a way, it never left. I brought it home with me, and in time shared the experience with my husband. Through the course of months it has contributed to a great deepening of our intimacy and love. And I’ve found that the love is a presence I can use. I can hold others in it, I can give it to them, I can use it for healing. It’s not just the love that came from that one experience. That experience taught me about the present and available source for all love. The words that I have for it are: my love is my own. It’s not something I have to negotiate with others for. My love is my own, I’m free to give it, I do it for myself and not to incur favor or obligation or even relationship. I do it because it is what I am made to do – it is what I am made of.
And because my love is my own, it is also free. It is for all of you – you can have it without obligation. You don’t have to pay for it; you don’t owe me anything back. It’s not the opening salvo for negotiations about a relationship. It’s simply the truth about who I am.
Christian Science teaches that God is Love, and that man is the reflection of God. From this it follows that love is our essence, and that God is the source of it. It makes sense, from this, that we should love naturally, reflexively, simply as the expression of our being. And I like knowing that this love is not theoretical, but real and satisfying in every sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment