Chapter 67. Love

I’ve learned that the heart is an ocean, endless and deep. It accepts both darkness and light.

It is strong. It expands, holding more than anyone would ever choose for it to carry. 
And it keeps going, because that's what it's meant to do...

My heart is an ocean, and I am a warrior.

– Kristin Bergsagel Bauck

One of my favorite memories of nearly 20 years of teaching childbirth education was when one husband described the mother of his child while she labored; he said, “My wife is a warrior!”

We can be warriors, as needed. We all keep going.

During my recent reading of The Nightengale - a story of two adult sisters who witnessed atrocities during the WWII German occupation of France and who chose to participate in the resistance - the last three short sentences jump out at me:

“Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.”

Even in the midst of anguish, frustration, and great pain, we go on. 

We remain, and we can choose to be present.

Maybe being present is much of what’s needed to be real.

In some ways my dad, though often distant from us kids emotionally, was a good example of being present and real. 

Dad said it like he saw it, and often did it like he wanted. 

 - With his wry sense of humor: he'd sport a t-shirt saying “Not only am I perfect, I’m Norwegian too!” (1998 pic); he'd say often at the end of his work day "Poor George, poor, poor, George." 

George & Adeline with the grandkids 1996

 - When his kids were little he gave us foot rides (both the kind where we sat on his foot and he'd drag us around skimming the floor, and the kind where we'd airplane-spread balance with our tummy planted on his two feet lifted toward the ceiling while he lay on his back getting a good ab workout and giving us kids a thrill!). 

 - He had darker edges too: grudges held, bitterness expressed, derogatory comments made about nurses (which was my chosen profession at the time, so I let it wound me). 

 - But Dad made the most of his moments: traveling as much as he did -- before retirement, thank goodness, because if he'd have waited there would have been no traveling -- even when funds were hardly available. He took us kids to Europe for a final trip in December 1998 to January 1999 – one last trip doing what he loved and being with those he loved.

I can learn from that real-ness. In my life, in this space where I remain, my invitation to be real and present  translates into accepting what is and choosing to live in love.

In this time when I don’t truly know what is dark or what is light, it does seem to me that “darkness is as light” might refer, rather mysteriously, to the presence of LOVE in all. If LOVE is all present (and I believe LOVE is always accessible and available) then LOVE is in both of what I might perceive as dark and/or what I might perceive as light. Dark and light are not different when LOVE is present.

In any situation redemptive light and love can be present.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

– Martin Luther King

Love is the very physical structure of the universe, driving all things toward union, attraction, and cosmic sympathy…

We are born out of love, we exist in love and we are destined for eternal love. . .

It is time to reinvent ourselves in love."

- Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit priest and paleontologist (1881-1955)

Love lasts. Love is all. “God is love” (I John 4:8). The Spirit of God is poured into our hearts as Love (Romans 5:5). We are destined for eternal love.

These are wonderfully ethereal and lofty ideas. 

May we also realistically attempt to apply to the everyday mundane?

Might I add that my attempts to love often are full of self? 
That love is rocky? 
Sometimes even devastating? 

And also worth it?

2017 is when I’m finally wrapping up this story. In February I listen to a Kristen Tippet podcast (aired Feb 9) that is an interview with Alain de Botton, entitled “The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships.” Both grounding and encouraging is how I hear these words, that jive with my lived experience, and are good reminders.

“My view of what one should talk about on a first date is not showing off and not putting forward one’s accomplishments, but almost quite the opposite. One should say, 
“Well, how are you crazy? I’m crazy like this.” 
There should be a mutual acceptance that two damaged people are trying to get together…

So, the acceptance of ourselves as flawed creatures seems to me what love really is. Love is at its most necessary when we are weak, when we feel incomplete, and we must show love to one another at those points. So we’ve got these two contrasting stories, and we get them muddled…

Love is something we have to learn, and we can make progress with, and that it’s not just an enthusiasm; it’s a skill.

It requires forbearance, generosity, imagination, and a million things besides. 
And we must fiercely resist the idea that true love must mean conflict-free love, that the course of true love is smooth. 
It’s not. 
The course of true love is rocky and bumpy at the best of times. 
That’s the best we can manage as the creatures we are. 
It’s no fault of mine or no fault of yours; it’s to do with being human. 
And the more generous we can be towards that flawed humanity, the better chance we’ll have of doing the true hard work of love.”

-  Alain de Botton

Love is realistic, and ridiculously hard work. And, I’ll say it again, it is worth the work! I am forever grateful to do this love work and  dance with Gregg, and that he is willing to do it with me!

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

-Anais Nin, writer (21 Feb 1903-1977)

Of course, this work of loving extends to kids, parents, siblings, friends, acquaintances, the world. What a privilege it is to have people to love, and risk blossoming as we engage in loving each other.

I asked my mom and I ask myself: how do I want to be remembered?

I want to be remembered as one who lived love – who could both receive and offer love. One who kept attempting to love in the midst of her craziness.

I am well aware of how imperfectly I’ve loved. Of how imperfect I am.

I am human.

I am real.

I don’t know diddly-squat.

What I do know is that I want to be about love. 

That I want to be someone who keeps reinventing herself in love. Who is a being of LIGHT and LOVE.

our clan, December 2016

We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence.

So love is our very nature.

Love is our first, middle, and last name.

Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest.

– Thomas Keating