February’s Ode To Love

 

Photo by Clare Bloomfield

“He, whose love touches, walks not in darkness.” ~ Plato

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” ~ Rumi

“…for love is immortality.” ~ Emily Dickinson

Potentially being one of the coldest months of the winter season, celebrating love on Valentine’s Day in February always seemed to break up the monotony of those short, frosty days. And like the first signs of spring, the holiday gives us something to look forward to – a day to fetch forward memories – those episodes of love won and lost throughout our cyclical lives. Valentine’s Day represents the eternal quest that poets and writers, artists, philosophers, mystics, and humanity in general, have forever explored. What is love?

Before we journey into the spirituality of love, let’s take a brief trip back into childhood...

This month is a lovely time to recall childhood memories of occasions that represent love in its simplest and most innocent forms. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ll share a special time of love that began with a valentine celebration from elementary school – 3rd grade to be exact.

My 3rd grade teacher gave each student a list of every classmate’s name to take home, so when we prepared our valentines, no one was forgotten. With that list in hand, I’d spread out all my little valentine pop-out cards on the floor, and went to work picking out the most special valentine for my best friends, a boy or two I was secretly fond of, and the classmates I admired, in that order. I’d use my favorite color crayons to sign my name on each card.

I’d slip the valentine into its little white envelope where I’d write the name of my classmate in another crayon color, then lick and seal. But before that task was done, the second most important part of the ritual wasn’t complete until my favorite gum drops, cinnamon red hots, or penny lollipop was neatly tucked inside. It was an unspoken code that cinnamon, cherry, grape, and orange flavors were the most coveted and high ranking in that special I like you category. Task complete, I’d neatly stack each valentine in a brown paper bag which I tenderly carried to school.

It was agony to have to wait until after school lunch hour before the class completed the final part of the valentine ritual – the exchange! We were given classroom freedom to carry our bag around and dispense out our valentines to fellow classmates, and of course, one for the teacher, which we placed on her desk. After that was complete, we’d return to our desks and open our valentines. Imagine the glances of mutual appreciation, smiles, and giggles that endured until the bell rang to go home.

As I write this, I ask myself, but what made a 3rd grade friend special? Children aren’t primarily attracted to physical looks. They haven’t developed a strongly slanted societal ego image. As I recall, one little boy would stop and hold the jump rope for my friends and I to be able to play double-dutch or kindly fetch our ball for us before he ran off with his friends. One of my best friends had no problem acquiring candy cake sprinkles from her mother’s kitchen while I secretly retrieved the shredded coconut from our family pantry so we could decorate mud pies. She loved playing in the cool mud with me and had a flair for creativity. Candy sprinkle mud pie, coconut mud pie, dandelion flower mud pie…

David Campbell was one of the boys I clearly remember from 3rd grade. He didn’t make fun of other kids, especially my glasses and freckles. We had mutually exchanged our best valentines! I think he liked my smile. I liked his smile and gentle manner. His dad owned the five and dime store across from my parent’s jewelry store on Main Street in Chadron, Nebraska. One Saturday afternoon, while I was hanging around my dad at his watchmaker’s bench looking through all his little containers of gems and gadgets, in walked David Campbell and his father. I was invited to play with David in the basement of their store, where all the unsellable toys and five and dime inventory treasures secretly lived. Oh, what heaven! That sealed it for me. Treasure hunting with David Campbell reached the top three of my special friend’s list forever – in 3rd grade.

We all have similar stories of early life that reflect innocent love. As adults, we can forget the simple magic of the heart. We accumulate more experiences, and complex ones at that. The stakes are higher because we play with more complicated things. As spiritual beings having a human experience then, what are we learning about love? What is love?

I’ve learned that love is one of the highest expressions of the spirit. The essence of every positive religious and spiritual foundation is love-centered. I’ve discovered that there are four pillars that create a worthy foundation for an enduring spiritual-based life of love: These four pillars are kindness, tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness.

The four pillars of love constitute a part of the spiritual “holy grail” that humanity strives for – a most priceless treasure for healing damaged emotions and activating the core love within again so we may freely and selflessly express that love in the physical world – people, the earth, animals, etc. When we realize the divine spark lives within us, we suddenly see the divine in everything else. It changes our reality. That is the promise of love. It dissolves the curtain of separation and re-unites.

We can’t profess to know all there is about love. Love is ever evolving within us. We’ve all wandered off into or remained for too long in enough dangerous territory where the virtues of compassion and honesty, kindness, spiritual and emotional maturity, tolerance and forgiveness were unsustainable or even lacking, and we’ve learned why we chased the very things that weren’t good for us. The dark side of ourselves that hasn’t been acknowledged and healed – that adversary that is our own unrealized darkness – sees the open door and issues in people, places and things to mirror precisely what is lacking within us. The absence of love is always about lack in some unprocessed and undigested form.

Through the mistakes and trials of our lives, we learn love doesn’t have a price tag. It doesn’t use the words owe or own. It doesn’t try to suffocate or change our spirit. It isn’t sex nor is it the body itself. It isn’t money. It isn’t material things by themselves. It isn’t silence because of the misplaced honor of family “blood is thicker than water” tradition where keeping painful secrets allows abusive behaviors to thrive. If we take charge of our spiritual growth, we’ll be fortunate to re-learn the value, wisdom, and unlimited power of love.

True and pure expressions of love are really simple aren’t they? Once we get beyond the illusions of what we thought love was, and return back to what we remember and know intuitively about what love is, we remember… Love is simple. Love is spiritual. Love is the magical child waiting to be set free to unite everything with the four pillars of kindness, tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness.

This Valentine’s Day, get some crayons or colored markers or water color paint, and a few sheets of water color paper or poster board, and take the risk of opening up the child within. Make valentines for the special people in your life. You can replace the lollipops and gum drops with gourmet Chocolate, if you like. Go see the movie, Toy Story 3. Your love will shine through and delight that special someone. And you will shine. That’s the promise of love.

Affirmation for this month – Love

I know that the greatest power is the power to love. Today, I recognize that tenderness and kindness, right action, and compassion weave the universe into a never ending cherished existence.

Live in beauty and be well - Triza Schultz

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