Category Archives: Spiritual

The Sweet Knowings Of Love

Posted in Brides, family, generational changes, Life, Love, Parenting, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

The journey of love is a journey of many sweet knowings. It is the sweet bliss, in first love, of discovering all your love’s little secrets, her favorite flower and fragrance, the color that sets off her eyes so; his plaid flannel shirts, the way he laces up his boots, his shaving brush, and that one wild hair in his eyebrow; the scent of her skin, the feel of her hair, the drawer she keeps her lingerie in.

It is later the being together and love becomes the sound of the key as he locks up the house, the sound of the rain in the shower each morning as she is singing and shampoos her hair. It is how she rolls over at night in bed, how he sleeps like a saint, with his hands folded over his chest; it is what he can fix; what she can mend. And it is the changing, this way and that way.

Sometimes there are unkind words spoken the anger and love in the mist; making love, holding hands. And the children, wanting, not being sure about wanting them; being scared, and so overjoyed and seeing them sleeping and carried at night in his arms; how he is so tender, how she is so easy, so strong with them.

It is watching the years go by they come and go and come and go and then they just seem to Go and Go. Autumn and spring and winter and summer. So slowly and endlessly beautifully folding, unfolding so quickly go. And how we have done every year, so many things and so few. Each day, and the meals and the work and the talk.

Each day a small town with a map and the trip they have taken in it. And the walks and the light and the changing of the light and how they have traveled. And how they have given the gifts. At Christmas, birthdays, wedding  anniversaries and just because. They want to remember all the words they have written on cards. The things they have said and the things they have whispered to each other. I love you, good night and I adore you. You are my one and only.

And how time has passed He has grown old and he has white in his hair and the fine thin lines of his life and sun are remaking his eyes. He notices that her eyes softer now but still blue and even after so many years and the fading he still loves her. He still loves the scent of her perfume after all these years. 

She still loves how he after all these years he still sleeps with his hands folded over his chest and the scent of his after shave lotion. They love remembering now and not forgetting why they love each other. He said for them it’s been like a long love song that tells the story of how they have melted, woven themselves, befriended, ensouled one another.

 Now that they are here at the end of their lives that they know one another so well, like the bird knows the air like the snowdrift knows the snow; and how he said long a go, until we know each other like the seasons; and now it is spring; and now it is summer now it is autumn now it is winter; and we know we know, that love is endless and we will know each other in eternity too.

A Test of Love by St. Augustine…

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 “A Test of Love” is a sermon once preached by St. Augustine where he proposed a kind of self test to see if we truly love God.

 Lets suppose God proposed to you a deal and said, “I will give you anything you want” and you can own the world.

Nothing will be impossible for you, nothing will be sin and nothing forbidden. You will never die, never have pain, never have anything you do not want and always have anything you want.

 Except for just one thing you will never see my face. Augustine closed with this question: Did a chill rise in your hearts when you heard the words you will never see my face? That chill is the most precious thing in you; that is the pure love of God.” What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? I wonder…

Love Letters Speak Of Secret Wishes

Posted in Dreams, generational changes, Keepsakes, Letters, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

A love letter is a declaration that speaks of secret wishes, shared joy, or lasting A love letter is the most intimate correspondence a person can receive.

 With in its lines promises given, and fond memories recalled. Within its lines secret desires are made known through divine inspiration.

Written in elegant scrip on scented stationary or scrawled haphazardly on a scrap of paper, mailed from across the seas, hidden in a bouquet of roses, or tucked between the pages of an album, a love letter is to be cherished always. Love letters are precious reminders of heart-felt sentiments. They may bring encouragement and reassurance to the pining heart. It’s a reminder that says, “We’ll be together soon.” Or they may be simple reminders that say “I’m thinking about you. You make me smile.”

Whatever their purpose, love letters are received with joy and anticipation. Then saved in special places. Maybe in a dresser drawer, under mattress, ribbon-tied in a hope chest, or secreted away n a quiet corner. They are kept to be lovingly revisited for many years to comes. Over time, letters may become worn and tear-stained, but the meaning of their words remain as true as the day they were written.

Every day, thousands of people visit web sites seeking advice and suggestions about love and romance. Today I read that  hand written ” love letters” are still holding their place in the hearts of lovers. Men and women are happy to receive a love letter by Email. However receiving a love letter through the postal service still ranks number one, in the hearts of women everywhere. 

To Console Is To Comfort

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To console is to comfort with your words, with your hands, with your heart, and with your prayers.  To console is to mourn with one another and thereby divide the power of the loss. In consoling you make yourself and the person you care about less alone.

You listen from the innermost place in her or his soul, respond from the most generous part of yourself to the neediest part of him or her. More, perhaps, than we would like to acknowledge, life is infused with tragedy. Everybody is given burdens of heart that are almost too much to bear; we all have sorrows and heartaches that bring into landscapes of pain that at times seem untraversable.

 There are times when we feel that what we are experiencing will utterly devour or destroy us. To be aware of this is to know how immense the need for consolation is. Faced with midst, we can do nothing but attempt to extend the healing gift even if we feel totally unequipped to offer it.

For no matter how inadequate our unpracticed gestures may seem, they will surely reach into the place that is aching for solace. Consolation is a spiritual undertaking. It begins with the state of grace that gives us wisdom and is one of our highest callings to abide there a while with one another.

We all need to be willing to act as physicians of the spirit for one another during the painful times. For it is when we are assaulted by the visitation of life’s sorrows that we most need to feel the presence of love. It’s when we are broken-hearted that we need to be ministered to, when we are in grief that is when we need to be taken into the presence of God’s grace and love.

I’ll Always Choose You

Posted in Brides, Dreams, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

I’ll always choose you! When you choose to love one person in a special, committed way, you are unchoosing or giving up your option to choose all others, for a time at least, in that same particular way.

The feeling of “being in love”  is the raving experience that makes us willing, even daredevilishly eager, to make these sacrifices. It’s a joy to choose one above all others, a delight to feel graced and blessed by their uniquely delicious and heartwarming presence.

But this choosing, grand as it is and willing as we are to make it, it is also symbolic of the many choices, little renunciations, and revisions of priority that, for love, we shall come to make as we walk the path of relationship. There’s a great deal we do (or discontinue doing) precisely and only because we love.

 When Jane fell in love with Brand she postponed graduate school to take care of Brands two little girls, whose mother died of cancer. Jane did this with no regrets and a lot of love. Later in life when the girls left home to go to college Jane went back and finished her postponed educational goals.

Jane’s brother Dan moved out of the house he’d built for himself to live in the town where Jen, his new love, lived. She was a tenured professor and couldn’t move to the town where Dan lived. The corporation that Dan works for transferred him to an office in the town that Jen lived in.

Dan excepted the job transfer and proposed to Jen. Hooray! Jen said yes. One year later they had a little girl. Dan has no regrets because he made those compromises out of love. Oh, he still owns the house that he built and hopes that when they retire they will live in it but if not he is willing to compromise because he loves Jen more than the house he built.

Such revisions are only the tip of the iceberg. Each day, in love, you will be faced with decisions and choices, invited to make compromises that represent a willingness to meet the one you love halfway on the playing field of love. Thus, you may find yourself adapting to uncomfortable  schedules or meticulous (or sloppy) housekeeping habits (the proverbial toothpaste folded up wrong or far too perfectly), taking vacations you never imagined ( but ended up loving anyway), preparing food you never even liked. or entering into financial arrangements that stretch your equanimity to the limit.

A compromise for love needs to be just that: a conscious revision of your own preferences. As such, it becomes a creative, imaginative act, and surprisingly beautiful frame. But, above all it shows you the depth of your love. For when we smooth off the corners of our own dogmatic priorities, we reach toward one another. In so doing, we see that love, the deep recognition of the soul of the one we love.

 In the spiritual journey of love it is our soul who choose us for each other. We meet through the eyes of the pulse. we do not choose, but each is chosen for this love, This path, this new green road, this first kiss, the single beating heart, the compromises made for love. This us!

When We Accept What Is

Posted in Dreams, family, Family Values, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual by

We usually mosey into relationships seeing their obvious possibilities, imagining specified outcomes, cocooning them with our own expectations.

But what actually occurs is often shockingly different from what we expected.

 The person you wanted to marry has a phobia about commitment. The woman you knew would make a great mother decides to go off to law school.

The suitor with the bottomless trust fund decides to give away all his money and live in a cave. Surprising revisions can happen on even at the simplest levels: “When I fell in love with him, he was wearing a black cashmere sweater and a pair of black dress pants; but after I married him, all he would wear was sweatshirts, his favorite sports hats and jeans.”

Expectations come in two forms: general and specific. General expectations have to do with our dreams and plans for a specific relationship that it will lead to marriage, that it will bring you children, that it will make you “happy.” Specific expectations have to do with what we think we can count on day-to-day – he’ll take out the trash, she’ll handle the kids in a way I approve of. On one level, these expectations are all quite reasonable;  it’s appropriate to have long-range plans and goals, and it’s legitimate to expect specific kinds of participation from your partner.

But when your relationship becomes a litany of failed expectations— what you hoped for but didn’t get—– its time to look at what’s happening from an entirely different perspective. Perhaps, instead of needing to “communicate better” or “negotiate your differences” on an emotional level, you’re being asked, on a spiritual level, to learn to accept what is.

Accepting — finding a way to be comfortable with things as they are—- is actually a very developed spiritual state. It means that you’re relinquished the preconceptions of your ego and surrendered to what’s been given to you. Maybe he’s not the provider you hoped for, but his spiritual strength is a constant inspiration; perhaps she’s not the housekeeper you wanted, but the way she nurtures your children is absolutely beautiful.

Acceptance allows your spirit to grow. When you’re able to recognize the little  miracles and great lessons that replace your expectations, you suddenly discover that what you hoped for— was pitifully puny compared to what was actually held in store for you. And in a way far more complex and elegant than you could have imagined, your life is following a sacred design. 

 So if you want a life that is larger than life and a relationship that is finer than even your wildest hopes, peel back your expectations and start to accept the good in what is.  (This only applies to mentally stable people.)

Stay Available To Mystery

Posted in Life, Love, Romace, Spiritual by

Love of the heart and soul is mysterious. It takes chances . It believes in miracles. It is breath, movement, magic, music, the evanescent moment, the blissful surprise. 

 To be available to the mystery means that you are open, expectant, waiting continually poised on tiptoe, ready to be illumined not locked in your own expectations of how you think it should happen.

In life and in love, this means living free, with your mind-set loose from its gears, not endlessly chattering inside, “But it has to be this way” or “I thought it was going to be that way.” Our own ideas, those tidy little constructions of the intellect and psyche, just to serve to limit our reality, shut down the possibilities, create a universe only as complex, and rarified as the busy minds that invent it.

 Indeed, if we’re too invested in the concepts of the mind, we will only recognize the things and allow into our lives all kinds of experiences that confirm what our minds have already seen.

When we set out to prove our presumptions, we can end up blocking our chances of falling toward the miraculous. That’s because being available to the mystery means being wiling to believe that something more or a different something we literally cannot imagine could be lying in wait for us.

 Indeed, when you surrender, you may step into an experience so huge and splendid and grand that, truly, you may feel as if you have stepped right out if this world. Yet miracles await us at every corner, in every dimension of our lives.

We fall in love: our children are born, we stand on a street in a foreign city, and meet the friend of a lifetime. Falling asleep, we dream, and in dreaming are given solutions to some of our perplexing problems. Whether in the unexpected and beautiful elevation of our daily lives as we ordinarily live them, or through the destined and magical introduction to a deeper life of the spirit, we are all being invited to come to the larger world, the bright light, the truer home.

Indeed, as we move through life we are continually presented with events and encounters that, in defying our expectations, quietly nudge us to change. The degree to which they can change us depends on whether our minds dismiss them, or whether we stay beautifully open, to receive what they are offering.

To be available to the mystery, therefore, is to be willing to be surprised. As a child discovers his face in the mirror; as a lover, undressing his or her lover for the first time, discovers the secrets of their love. To be open to the miraculous is at last to be bountifully blessed. It is to move with grace, as you sweetly conduct your life, from the mountains of the mind to the rivers of the heart.  ” Happy Valentines Day“

You’ve Got To Have High Hopes

Posted in Life, relationships, Spiritual, Uncategorized by

Is the human heart the only source of its own healing?

Is the human conscience the only voice that whispers to us, when we are feeling bitterness and estrangement? 

Have you ever experienced an emptiness that happens when someone you loved and needed died?  

Did it seem like from somewhere, something came to fill your emptiness and mend you where you were broken?

 Was it only time that mended your broken heart?  Was it the resurging busyness of life that filled your emptiness and mended your heart or was it your faith in something other than yourself?

 Is it the human heart the only source of its own healing?  Is it only the unpredictable fluctuations of the human spirit that we have to thank? Can you think of a time when a strength and wisdom beyond your own kept you feeling hopeful? Despite your own withered heart.

To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift. And what does that mean about the future? What do we have to hope for? Humanly speaking, we have only the human best to hope for: that we will live out our days in something like peace with the ones we love; that our best dreams might come true. 

To have faith is to remember and wait, and to wait in hope, is to have what we hope for has already began to come true in us through our hoping. Every once in a while, life can be very eloquent. You go along from day-to-day not noticing very much, not seeing or hearing very much. And then all of sudden, when you least expect it, something speaks to you with such power that it catches you off guard, makes you listen to it, if you want to or not. It seems to know you and wants to mend your wounds. It seems to know that what you are doing isn’t working for you. What is that voice?  I wonder… 

Love Is A Spiritual Enterpise

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A relationship is always far more than we imagine or expect it to be. It is more than a living arrangement, more than being together in a social circumstance, more than the bright-colored kite tail of romance; it is the coming together of two persons whose spirits connect with one another, beautifully and painfully, in the in the inexorable process of their individual becoming.

In this respect, relationships are like relentless grinding stones, polishing and refining us to the highest level of our radiance. It is this radiance that is the highest expression of love and why a relationship is a spiritual enterprise.

When we look at the person we love with the expectation that he or she will or should solve all our emotional problems or make all our worldly dreams come true, we reduce that person to be a pawn in our own self-serving plot, seeing the relationship as an experience of “What can I get?” or “What can I become?”

When we view a relationship from a different vantage point, one that acknowledges it as a spiritual incubator we start to see the person we love differently. We see him or her as separate from our hope, from our demands that he or she be a particular way now, for us. Rather, we recognize our partner as a spiritual accomplice that we hold in the spiritual light.

Holding your partner in the spiritual light is seeing the other as a soul in a constant state of becoming, encountering your partner in all the radiance of his or her own being and strivings to be. To hold the other in the spiritual light is to seek the pure spirit that lies behind the limitations of individual psychology and social circumstance, to apprehend the full essence of your partner, as he/she was since time began, as they will be for all time after.

To do this is to reach beyond the petty and even gigantic disappointments that you experience during your time together, to apprehend the divinity of this single unique and exquisite being who has been given to join you on the journey of your own becoming. To hold each other in the spiritual light is to see one another’s souls perfectly engaged in the process of love.

Love As A Garden

Posted in Brides, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Uncategorized, Women by

Communications have improved in so many ways. Pocket computers carry more power than could be imagined in older days. But all the electronic gizmos don’t help a romance at all, unless you’re communicating your love when you call.

Silence is like a vacuüm, drawing in all thoughts that go by. So protect your lover’s ears; be aware what your words imply. Choose your words carefully; think about what you say. Don’t fill the void with just anything, squawking like a joy.

Make sure your emotions aren’t trapped elsewhere. Give what you say, meaning; speak and act with care. Then love will sound like a trumpet and to your words impart the clarity of romance as you speak heart to heart.

Think of your love as a garden, and unless you tend to it, you’ll never reap the full rewards that love can bring. The ground need to be tilled with kindness, for if it is too hard, love’s seed can’t spout. The seeds have to be planted with care if they are to penetrate your lover’s heart.

Love needs to be watered with kind words and compliments, Love must bask under the warm sun of your undivided attention. The weeds of pettiness and lies must be pulled form the field of love. The fruits of love need time to grow and cannot be picked until they are ripe.  If you don’t put the required effort into your garden of love, you can certain that the weeds will invade and your garden will yield little in the way of love. But if you work at it, you’ll find a bumper crop of love waiting for you to harvest each and every day.

A Season Of Life

Posted in family, generational changes, Life, Love, relationships, Spiritual, Women by

Positive minds produce positive lives. Negative minds produce negative lives. Positive thoughts are always full of faith and hope. Negative thoughts are always full of fear and doubt.

Some people are afraid to hope because they have been hurt so much in life. They have had so many disappointments, they don’t think they can face the pain of another one. Therefore, they refuse to hope so they would not be disappointed.

This avoidance of hope is a type of protection against being hurt. Disappointment hurts! So rather than be hurt again, many people simply refuse to hope or to believe that anything good will ever happen to them. This type of behavior set up a negative lifestyle. Remember “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”

Do you know someone who is extremely negative?  They might say to you, that if they have two positive thoughts in a row that their mind would get a cramp? Their whole philosophy is this: “If you don’t expect anything good to happen, then you won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t.” After spending time getting to know them, you learn that they have encountered many disappointments in life, leaving them afraid to believe that anything good might happen to them again. It becomes obvious to you that since their thoughts are all negative, so are the words they speak; therefore, so is their life. You try to  stay positive and wish you could get into their head and replace their negative thoughts with positive ones. Wouldn’t that be helpful?   I have friends who are negative, and I find it interesting that words they speak came to pass in their lives.

 I  also have friends who are positive, and are always finding the good in the many situations they are in life. It doesn’t mean that people who are positive thinkers don’t have doubt and feel sad, but it  does means they don’t stay stuck in their negative thoughts. It means that remain hopeful.

 Sometimes a season of life might be so devastating that the only positive thought we can have for a while is I’m breathing. I was in a season of life with a friend a few years ago. All we could say to each other was, “Your breathing aren’t you?”  Then that makes this a good day doesn’t it?  Now when I want to complain about my current season of life, I remind myself that I’m not only breathing but, I’m happy again. Life is good. Isn’t it?

Wouldn’t life be perfect if we never had to endure the devastating seasons of it?  

A few years ago I went through a devastating season of life. It was when people I loved passed away unexpectedly, and all I could do was breath because I was numb. 

 Now, I’m in a season of a life, and looking forward to the birth of my granddaughter. I have learned that life really does work in seasons, and some can be cold like winter, while others can be sunny and warm like summer.

It’s The Little Things That Count

Posted in Brides, family, Family Values, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

It’s the little things you do each day that will keep your love strong. Grand gestures are fun. They can make the heart soar. But if they only happen once or twice a year, What’s the fun in that? Little gestures are not as splashy. They may even go unnoticed. But if it weren’t for the raindrops, the oceans would soon be empty. So let your drops of love rain down. When people lose a partner whom they’ve loved dearly, it’s not the grand gestures that they miss, it’s  the little things. It’s the nightly cup of tea. It’s checking that the front door is locked. It’s flowers in the vase. It’s drying the dishes. It’s holding hands.

The little things are like the nails that hold a house together. You don’t see them, but they’re doing their work. And like nails, the little things don’t insert themselves without some help. Each one may not take a lot of energy, but if put enough energy into the little things, over time you’ll build a great big love. You’ve been taught to say “Thank You” for presents, but do you acknowledge the little presents your spouse gives you every day? You can never say “Thank You” too many times, though most people don’t say it enough. Do they?

Love

Posted in Books, Brides, Dreams, Life, Love, Quotes, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.  Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness,compassion, and affection; and the unselfish loyal, and benevolent concern for the good of another.  Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase,”God is Love” or Agape in the canonical gospels. Love may also be described as actions towards others (or oneself) based on compassion, or as actions towards others based on affection.

In English, love refers to many different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure, “I loved that meal” to Love at first sight such as in “Romeo and Juliet”  Shakespeare’s most popular archetypal stories of young teenage lovers.

Then there is the love at first glance kind of love as described in the novel “Les Miserables”, by Victor Hugo,  between the characters Marius Pontmercy a student and Cosette falling in love after glancing into each others eyes for the first time and by the end of the novel married each other.

Then there’s interpersonal attraction I love my partner. “Love” may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of a spouse, to the emotional closeness of family love or the platonic love that defines friendship. 

In romantic relationships, “falling in Love” is mainly a Western tradition. It is used to describe the process of moving from a feeling of neutrality towards a person to one of love. The use of the  term “fall” implies that the process is in some way inevitable, uncontrollable, risky, irreversible, or that it puts the lover in a state of vulnerability, in the same way the word “Fall” is used in the phase “To Fall Ill” or “To Fall Into A Trap.”  The term is generally used to describe an (eventual) love that is strong, although not necessarily permanent.  Before we fall in love, we can see the other person as a bare branch; as we fall, we coat him or her with jeweled attractions about 80 percent of our own making.

There are many contributing factors when we ask ourselves Who and why that person?  A few factors that contribute strongly to falling in love include proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and attractiveness. Similarity would seem especially important: some would even claim that when we fall in love we fall into narcissistic identification. 

 Psychology research has shown two basis for love at first sight. The first is that the attractiveness of a person can be very quickly determined, with the average time in one study being 0.13 second. The second is that the first few minutes of a relationship have shown to be predictive of the relationship’s future success, more so than what two people have in common or whether they like each other. Family therapists maintain that the reason we’re attracted to someone at this very deep level is that basically they are like us in a psychological sense. Others suggest that the very act of falling in love set in motion old patterns of how we love.

Love at first sight is a common trope in Western literature, in which a person, character, or speaker feels romantic attraction for a stranger.The name Romeo, in popular culture, has become nearly synonymous with “Lover.” Romeo and Juliet, does indeed experience a love of such purity and passion, that he kills himself when he believes that the object of his love, Juliet died.  The power of Romeo’s love however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is far more complex. Even Romeo’s relation to love is not so simple. Mean while Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. All of this started with a glance. I wonder how many of us “love” at first glance? I wonder…

Nana’s Hands

Posted in family, Family Values, generational changes, grandkids, Grandparenting, Life, Quotes, Spiritual by

If we can be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach. Our Nana was a generous woman with a big heart not just to her family but to all kinds of people, even people she didn’t know.

 She did nice things without expecting anything back. Nana was especially good at baking and she made the best chocolate chipcookies in the world.

One of the best things about Nana was that she loved people and they loved her back. Friends and family knew they could stop by and see her anytime and Nana would always welcome them. Everyone in her family depended on Nana to keep them up with the latest birth or who got married in the neighborhood (in the old neighborhood) as my dad use to say. They grew up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 

Now Nana’s not here to tell us what’s going on, or to bake those favorite things she was so good at making. Nana passed away a few years and my cousin found this poem and we realized that it describes how we felt about our Nana. It’s called “Nana’s Hands.”

Nana’s Hands used to touch us with. Nana’s hands would scold us and sit us down in a chair. Nana’s hands would applaud us when we did something good. Nana’s hands would hold us every chance they could. Nana’s hands would aid us when we fell down. Nana”s hands, Yes I miss them, they were the best hands around. Nana’s hands would spank us and she would say, “Now, Baby, you act right.” Nana’s hands would stroke us and tuck us in at night. Nana’s hands would pray for us, they would pray for everyone she knew. Nana’s hands would rise in the air as in God she put her trust. Nana’s hands were special; they were the very best. Nana’s hands got tired, and now they are at rest.

We thought a lot about the last line of that poem it taught us that it can be hard to lose people we love but it can sometimes be for the better too. When Nana got sick we felt bad for her when we realized she couldn’t do things she loved anymore and she was in pain. At least we knew that she didn’t hurt anymore.

 We also realized that we never thought about how things would change once Nana was gone. Losing someone you love can definitely help us appreciate the people who are special to us while we still have them in our lives.