Messy, Crazy, Shady, Love

Any given summer, the airways fill with songs about lust. Love is now considered passé. Or perhaps that is my age talking. Every generation thinks that they have the final word on love. We express this through music, books, and movies. We all think that we were the ones who captured the formula for self-expression. I have always looked somewhat askew at the proclamation of 1967 as the ‘Summer of Love’. "How could that be," my ego screams, I was just a wee babe too insignificant to explain to the minions what love truly is. Then I remember people were expressing their feelings about love long before I took a tour on this planet; and will continue to do so, long after I am gone. Yet I am sure at one time or another, most humans have wondered why something as natural as love, requires an often very public display of proclamation. I absolutely know that I don’t know the answer to that question. Love is often defined as singular, measured, traditional, and must be publicly acclaimed over and over again; least someone wonder if minds and hearts have strayed. So we dedicate holidays to love, write sonnets, poems, and songs about the mere feeling of love. If that isn’t enough,we carve our words of love in rings, bracelets, even inti innocent trees, just to make sure our love is imprinted for ever for the world to see.

However, in reality, love can be messy, fractured, splintered, and carved out in very uneven slices of emotional pie. Love comes with constant challenges, interruptions, temptations, and sometimes stiff penalties. Love is like life, the sweetness of it is often tempered by depth, time, space and limitations.

What do I know of love? Not much. My soul bank account can attest to that. I am overdrawn far more often than I am flushed with funds. Yet my wisdom, limited though it may be, is meant to be shared, so here it is;

Love is often unrequited, because life doesn't allow everything to happen.

Love is often momentary…..

That moment.

During that time.

 For that reason

Love is often painful. Because you can't always have what you want, nor should you.

Love is often blurry. You know what you feel. You know why you shouldn't, but that doesn't stop the tears from falling.

Love is often disappointing, because your heart and soul don't always share the same orbit.

Love refuses to stay in containers in a dark room never to be exposed outside of designated rooms. 

Love grows in unexpected places for unexpected reason.

Love will keep you alive, although it also might make you pray for death

Love comes with a side order of guilt, scandal, and if you really have it bad.... burnt offerings.

You will never understand love and rarely will you have love meet you where you are. We chase it, it chases us. We catch it and then sometimes carelessly toss it away. Then we mourn for it. Love will hurt you in more ways than you can describe the word pain. In the end I implore you to follow your soul over and over again. It will take you to the place where love resides. Your heart will follow… 

Finding my Religion

Have you ever really listened to the lyrics of a James Taylor song? Take Fire and Rain for instance.

."Won't you look down upon me, Jesus. You've got to help me make a stand. You've just got to see me through another day. My body's aching and my time is at hand. And I won't make it any other way" 

Or, You've got a friend "If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds and that old north wind should begin to blow,keep your head together and call my name out loud.Soon I will be knocking upon your door"

James Taylor songs are about love, pain, despair, hope and.....Spirituality. When I want to be close to a higher power,  I go outside explore the beauty of our planet and like Sweet Baby James, I arrive when I look up. 

This brings me to a discussion I had with a friend who felt that she really needed to not only tell me about her beliefs,she needed to sell me her beliefs. Of course this involved an examination of why I was spiritually inferior because I did not share her beliefs.

At midlife, through the power of observation, life experience, and just plain common deduction; I have concluded that the more someone lectures me about religion the less likely they are to have any real value to me in regards to teaching me anything about their faith. Note that patting oneself on ones back, is not in fact the true sharing of faith. 

I have stopped listening to people who tell me that they have a personal relationship with God based on their faith. Instead, I focus on the people who show me they have a relationship with faith itself. Those who live in love, on the basis of the belief that they should love as they live. Their actions require not a word to be spoken. 

In defining my own faith,I believe that faith is not defined by the number of times one attends church, rather it is whether the person carries faith in his or her heart that seeps out into real actionable deeds. After all, we all know  people who will show us; loyalty. dignity, trust and truth. You might never find them a church, in fact they often don't bring up allegiance to a particular faith.  

The silent ones without religious piety, communicate love of humanity in other ways. They will do what is right even when it goes against their own desires. They can be found working for Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, registering voters, acting as Big Brothers or Big Sisters. They will be on the front lines choosing people over money, the comfort of others, over their own personal comfort. They are the people who will let you find God, spirit, the theist in them. These are the people who can teach us a great deal about loving one another. Not through a memorized verse, but through a memorable life.

We don't put wind-chimes in the trees to prove to us that the wind is stirring. We hang them and music is created by an unseen force. We don't need others to challenge our faith to prove that we have a right to our own convictions. Listen not to the words of those who say only they speak for a God that only identifies with their political litmus test. Rather listen to the sound of your own heart and conscience.

Your own movement is creating beautiful compositions.Forget a visible chorus of applause some seek from a human audience.The hardest deeds are recognized by the supernatural. Rejoice in silence and even mocking from spectators. In fact, you should expect disdain when you refuse to bow to their attempts to appoint themselves as the sole maestro to the Heavens. Anyone can conduct music in virtual rooms of like-minded instruments that all play the same controlled tune. But the symphonies of life, they don’t come from man. The symphonies that will move you to tears and appreciation and commit you to sacrifice; those will resound from your soul.