Love is action. Love is energetic expression of divinity. Love is eternal. Love lives on, even after death. These beliefs I currently hold dear. Two members of my mother’s family passed this week; I send love in support of their grief. I feel their grief. For these reasons, I have been thinking about love and our eternal spirit ever more -
Despite the pain, the loss, the difficulty ….. Saturday night as I was falling asleep, this phrase kept ringing in my mind, so I got up to write it.
I think this line of thought is influenced by the recent passing of loved ones in my family, recent re-attachment to the concept that while the physical body falls away, loved ones passed on are still with us in spirit - as well as my recent dive into bell hook’s treatise, “All About Love.”
Relevant Quotations from All About Love
“Living life in touch with divine spirit lets us see the light of love in all living beings. That light is a resurrecting life force.” (p. 71)
“Love makes us feel more alive. Living in a state of lovelessness we feel we might as well be dead; everything within us is silent and still. We are unmoved.” (p. 191)
“Love knows no shame. To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending. The way we grieve is in formed by whether we know love. Since loving lets us let go of so much fear, it also guides our grief. When we lose someone we love, we can grieve without shame. Given that commitment is an important aspect of love, we who love know we must sustain ties in life and death. Our mourning, our letting ourselves grieve over the loss of loved ones is an expression of our commitment, a form of communication and communion. Knowing this and possessing the courage to claim our grief as an expression of love's passion does not make the process simple in a culture that would deny us the emotional alchemy of grief. Much of our cultural suspicion of intense grief is rooted in the fear that the unleashing of such passion will overtake us and keep us from life. However, this fear is usually misguided. In its deepest sense, grief is a burning of the heart, an intense heat that gives us solace and release. When we deny the full expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing emotional pain and physical ailments. Grief is most often unrelenting when individuals are not reconciled to the reality of loss.
Love invites us to grieve for the dead as ritual of mourning and as celebration. As we speak our hearts in mourning we share our intimate knowledge of the dead, of who they were and how they lived. We honor their presence by naming the legacies they leave us. We need not contain grief when we use it as a means to intensify our love for the dead and dying, for those who remain alive.” (p. 200-201)
Reflecting in gratitude on where love showed up for me these last few weeks, with images and words -
I found love in a sunny Sunday morning with a bowl of fruit. In tomatoes and zucchinis on a bed of buttery-flakey goodness. In sunset clouds. In sunrises and observing the people there - on 8/8, also the morning before the local high school first day started, I saw many couples at the beach for the sunrise. Naturally, this had me thinking of my fiancé, so I called him on the phone and we looked forward to sunrises on the beach together. I find love in his words.
I found love in my other realization late Saturday night - consoling my inner young girl for loss of connection to self/love/source in the past - in allowing that grief to wash over me. I tapped into my inner child’s past/current fear and hope for love, sprinkled with fear/ doubt that I wouldn’t ever attain it, as I imagine many of us have felt. But then, with growth - you find that love is all around, it’s in yourself and you can give this love to yourself. Your truth finds its way to you. Your truth comes to you - in what you read, in what you observe, in what you love. And you find that love is alive and love is aliveness.
I found love in letting go of regret for those times where I wish things could have gone more my way and struggled with my inability to change them. In the healing that took place in allowing myself to feel this swell of emotions - a mix of grief, sadness, regret as well as tremendous love, gratitude, and relief.
“Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” - M. Scott Peck
I found love in long walks on the beach at evening, as nature is a source of love. In spirals, circles, round objects - of my own creation recently, zucchini tarts. In the roundness, the completeness of the sun and the moon. In a fresh sushi dinner with a friend. In a sunrise with a friend. In a matcha latte date with a friend.
I found love in a journal I bought for my Aunt. In a call with Grandma. In a dip in the pool on a hot day. In moments of relief and rest.
I found love in indulgence of a lovely brownie that a friend gave as a gift of celebration (celebrating love feels so wonderful!). In bliss after picking up repairs from the jeweler. In gratitude for my car (which I bought this year!). In thinking of my fiancé whenever I catch my ruby heart charm and in gratitude that the pair of them - my engagement ring and the heart charm - now exist together.
Wishes and Prayers -
That your love return to you. That your love be a mirror. That your love be an infinity loop. That you return love to those that you love. That love returns to you, especially when you need it - (it does) - that you be aware of its presence.
Merci for reading. What is your experience with grief? What is your concept of eternal spirit? Do you believe that love lives on always?
sincèrement,
My grief began as anger. My brother was killed in Vietnam on his 21st birthday. I understood his choice for enlisting but I hated that war, so much that I didn’t write to him in a way that showed Jerry how much I loved him. Grief didn’t really happen until a few years ago. Friends of his planned a memorial for the 50th anniversary of his death. Their memories, their love for Jerry, helped me to think, feel and react as we all sat and talked about this wonderful, warm, wacky redhead.
My grief has become real to me, but I think it is more like sadness because of all I lost when we lost him.