What is this Thing we call LOVE?

Love makes the world go round.

Love is a many splendid thing.

Love makes one see the world anew.

Love in Bloom.

Love is Blind. (IS it)

Love of money.

Love as a Driving force?

Love is in the Air.

What the world needs now is LOVE sweet Love.

Love can break a Heart.

Love can mend a Hurt.

Do we learn to love our children or love them because they are?

Falling in and out of Love?

Love is like a train wreck.

Who are we in LOVE? As if we become different. Perhaps we do.

Just some of the questions that this past Valentine’s Day has brought to bear.

Love made new each day....

"Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." - Ursula K. LeGuin

and it takes time. and loving work. It may be magical in how it happens, yet it's true to keep it from getting hard edges and crusting. We need to invite our selves in each moment to make it fresh, to leave behind the old edges when they no longer hold for us the tasty fresh smell of what it is that pulled us toward the love in the first place.

When we take the time; it also allows us to make space and freedom for all of the particles involved. Like bread, love does need warmth and space to grow. To fill the house, our hearts, our world with the Remembering of it in every cell that vibrates around us.

I smell it in the wind today...

Thank you Karen W. for sharing the quote

photo taken by ME - thank you ML for the camera and help downloading it.

Love continues.....

According to American psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan here is a definition of love

”When the safety and well-being of you is of equal importance as the safety and well-being of me,then a state of love exists.”

I rather like the way this is said yet it seems so much more, so much more intangible. A place that has no words, no way of being described.

To survive in the very first days of our lives we need to know love and touch. It is a time and place when we have no words to describe what it is we feel. There have been horrible studies done to prove this point, during the Renaissance and beyond. We are hungry to understand this thing ~ this Life force of LOVE. We thirst for a glimmer to quench this deep dry place; yet the river surrounds us.

We are busy taking in information from the moment we start the very first bit of BE-Coming. The zygote knows this fight of life; the moment and act of “love-making” that calls to our soul in the ethers, “Come, come be a part of us.” Sometimes it is answered, sometimes not. Sometimes we are ready ~ they are not and sometimes a Soul is ready and the “love-makers” are not. And in truth sometimes it has nothing what so ever to do with Love. Yet; I believe our BEING-ness has everything to do with LOVE and a whole lot of stardust and magic. The Miracle of Be-coming no matter how often it appears before me can never dim in it’s magical, mysteriousness! I am always always in AWE at new life, new bloom, new growth! The courage it takes to BE-COME! This life long process of BEING.

This for me is Love added to the eloquent words of our friend H.S. Sullivan, along with countless poets, painters, Artist of every genre known to the Elements, Plants, Furred, Finned, Winged, Creepy Crawlers, the Circling Winds, the gods and goddess, oh, and least I forget us Human.

Our Being true to ourselves is LOVE. And that takes courage and willingness to sit with what works and doesn’t, what serves us and what doesn’t and how in the end does serving our self serve the Greater Good of All?

Let us all continue to Grow, Live, bring and gift Joy, Laughter and Love to ourselves and those around us that perhaps someday in the not so distant future we will know PEACE, and all suffering will be an illusion.

Watch a time piece?

As I put yours on this morning
I wondered and nearly laughed till
I wept, we have so little of it between us
Yet, it is you who resets the time on my watch
You who gifted a clock that sings to me the time


So, like a thief I take what you gift
Hoping someday, I will wake
You'll be right beside me, having been there all along.
Laying with a body wrapped round me
Letting me hold your dreams safe

In time...you did not plan to Love me.
and I - from the moment I heard your voice
One touch of your skin, I knew the smell of us
Before, you ever drank from the cup.
I sank into me


though this is an older piece I have LOVE on the body.
How is it that it shows up in ways we don't think of? Un~called?
oh, my Love you know who you are.
Ours to hold close. It feels like there is indeed never enough time..........................


written November 2007

Feel the LOVE

So, when we think about the fact that today is considered a day for lovers. It brings to mind this thought ~ What is LOVE? I bet your brain went ~ What? We all feel and think we know what Love is, yet I wonder if each of us could really tell each other what LOVE is.

Could you do it without a metaphor and is it the same in each instant that we might use the word? It’s a four letter word with a whole lot of pack and baggage depending on how and where we were raised. According to the always ready to give advise on words Merriam-Webster it can be a noun or a verb. Coming form the Old High German luba love, Old English leof dear, and Latin libere to please 'then it meaning':
1 a) strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties [now that seems a bit unclear] b) attraction based on sexual desire [don’t know about you but I would call that lust] c) affection based on admiration, benevolence or common interests
2 warm attachment, enthusiasm or devotion
3 a) the object of attachment, devotion or admiration b) a beloved person [what?] or if you happen to be British you might use it as an informal term of address
4 unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another
5 a god or personification of love
6 an amorous episode as in: Love affair
7 the sexual embrace as in: copulation or to make love ~note verb
8 a score of zero as in: tennis


So all that said and now put aside; what is LOVE? An emotion? A chemical body response? What is it truly?

I would have to say that it is a Mysterious Miracle. For something that is so difficult to really name and give voice too, we spend as a culture, as a species putting a lot of Faith toward something that we really have no way of even comprehending ~ though of course we are all positive that we do! That my friends is what makes it so darn Mysterious. We create great works of Art, written, painted, sculptured, drawn, performance and any other way you might think of in the name of LOVE.

We even commit great atrocities in the name of Love. Love of religion, culture, country and family honour. There is a great sadness that comes with this thought, yet never the less it does not change the fact that it is so.

What compels us toward this mystery? Why is it we feel left out; not good enough if we think we are not Loved? Here I would like to state that we are always always LOVED as children of the Great Creator Mother/ Father, the Goddess, Yahweh, Spirit, Higher Being, the Cosmos and Universe, depending on your belief system. Our very existence states we are LOVE , LOVED and BELOVED. (but that’s a whole other story)

Why do we have this need to Love and Be-Loved? I believe it is indeed a need versus a want. It feels in my Soulbody like the very essence of Life force! Without it the lights in our eyes don’t shine. The laughter we hear has no resonance. The kick in our dance step is lost. Yet one smile, kind word or touch and it can all come rushing back into our lives. That is indeed some powerful Medicine, Mystery and a down right Miracle!

Yes, it is a Miracle that with all the different ways, ideas, views of LOVE that we as a species ever pull it off. That indeed there are amazing stories of great Loves. That we see it no matter what else is going on in the world around us, two people with that extra little sparkle that lights up the whole space. Watching parents and their child(ren) doing something together where the rest of the world seems excluded. Oh, how we Love (verb) to be a voyeurs at those moments in time. It makes our hearts skip a beat ~ well, it does mine!

I want to invite each of us to become voyeurs to our own moments of being LOVE. The moments we randomly choose to do something kind and special for another or “god forbid” something for ourselves. We are the LOVE we wish to see in the world. We must first Love ourselves to know how it feels and what it means before we can share this Mysterious Miracle with another. For if we don’t Love ourselves no amount of someone telling us they Love us will ever feel REAL.

Though I’ve not really answered the question What is LOVE? Other then to tell you it’s a Mysterious Miracle. Because I truly think it is an unanswerable question, as many Right answers as there are creatures to love. Perhaps, I can now say ~ without a doubt

I LOVE YOU!

Happy St. Valentine’s Day 2009~

photo Two of the LOVES of my life, taken by T. Griffin , love the Momma

Memories, past, present and future

Memories, what is a memory really? Is it a truth or a lie? Is it fact? Or none of these things? Memories, we all have them both in our bodies and in our mind. Our soul holds the truth of the thing. For does not a memory get twisted and turned? Parts of it become out of time sequence, the events themselves become sharper or dull with time depending upon the emotion that the whole event invokes. Then of course we throw in the reflection of times as we “look” back or forward to how the event may have effected us; and at each reflection does not the event or the idea of the event have a touch of a different slant; for we ourselves are changed by “it” and all that has come after. The event it self is changed in so much as we are by looking at and having it “look” back at us.

Memories, I am no longer sure that even the memory that the body holds is to the point, the meat of the thing possibly. Here to I believe it gets a little turned, the light shining through it shifts, as we reflect back on the event, or as someone else, who was there tells it in THEIR memory version. Then the way society tells us we should feel about something also gets to mix it up a bit. Truth, fact fiction? A touch of it all. What causes us to reflect back or forward to take apart, “work” , and “what if” a memory. To attempt to pull apart the thread in the tapestry that is us. Why does it become important to understand the event to look from all sides of the reflection? Then I also wonder are we ever able to really re – “create” in our minds eye the fact; just the facts of a “memory”? Are we capable of doing such a thing?
Same event 4 people, four different truths, even with two - can it be instant replayed? The same with two set of eyes, ears, feelings, linear time? What if one person then dies; how is the memory then held by the one? How much of who we are gets lost as people who know us die ? When we are the only one left with parts of a memory?

I love the sensation of the memory, the feeling of the whole thing, not the “Who Done It’s”. Sometimes, I like to take the smell or the touch of a memory and hold it to my heart, forget all the details, holding only enough of them to bring the smell, the taste, the touch, the sound, the sightedness of colour or shape, the sensation into a clarity. That’s the gift of a memory, the ability to gently rock me, or to have it throw me to the wolves so to speak.

Being “thrown to the wolves”, doesn’t make the memory a “bad” thought or sensation. It’s clarity such that I am transported to a place out of the present linear time, spiraling back to a place deep within. Though here too I will also state that YES, there are memories that I am torn and ripped, eaten, chewed and spit out again. This too offer up a tid-bit, something to work, to unravel and reweave.

Sit back who needs TV; unfold a memory! Like a good book ~ they become dog-eared, quotes that stick with you through time. Some stories/memories never grow old even in the retelling. Much laughter and warmth filling the space. Besides, they are the essence of how we become WHO it is that we are.

Which of these might invite us to a deeper understanding and healing? Given the opportunity to share it and sit with what comes up? And how often might we allow and honour a memory for the gifts that it has given? The moment in time so etched in our mind.
Sitting in the quiet, a Breath, and the memory we chose unfolds......

Waking in the Night ~ Scared or Sacred?

I know that I’m not the only person in the world that wakes in the middle of the night from a dream. Sometimes my heart, a deep pounding in my chest ~ scared to the point of checking the house. Other times I can’t put my finger on what causes me to sit up – take that deep body Breath that invites me to roll over - knowing that all is right with the world, at the very least my world.

For some “unknown” reason, I noticed the other day the words scared and Sacred have two letters that transposed create each other. It got me to sitting with how is it that we have been taught to be frightened by that which is Sacred? Visions or dreams from the Great Spirits? When did the story of the Great Creator turn toward an unforgiving Creator? What story is it that we wish to create for ourselves or to believe for there are many stories that have been told over the ages, by a vast number of Cultures. How are then any less real then the life we believe we are living?

I also found that there were moments of that waking in the night in a state of being scared that it invited me to an opportunity to converse with that which is Sacred. I would like to invite my readers to that same process. Of turning toward the Sacred when they find themselves in the realm of Scared. I invite us to this place not only in the middle of the night ~ in our waking day as well.
Might I say to you also that each Breath we take is a gift ~ it is indeed Sacred ~ it is Life, it is the name of the Divine in a whisper, form “my lips to God’s ears”. I am still breathing into life into the Sacred and I need not fear, for “that which moves all that which moves” walks the road with me.