Thursday, July 15, 2010

Lowering The Drawbridge To Your Heart

Love breaks us out of our shells. It asks us to take steps that sometimes we would rather not take, unfamiliar ones. Love calls us past the limitations that we have placed on ourselves or have let others place upon us. It bellows out, "Dance a new dance, sing a new song, take in new, deeper invigorating breaths. Living in Love can be awkward, unsure, and a little scary sometimes, but if we just have faith that there is a safety net underneath us, we can take a walk on Love's highwire, where there are new heights to be reached and new vista's to explore.

When you were very young, maybe events occurred that made you put a wall around your tiny beating heart. This was the natural thing to do for self-protection. But now, as adults, we can gently remove those walls because they now serve only to inhibit Love's reach. You can get glimpses of Love and passing feelings of it, but if the drawbridge is lowered and Love is fully let into your fortified castle, that's when abundant Life can flourish.

It All Comes Down To Love

It all comes down to Love. If we are not aware of our connectedness to it, if we do not show it, if we are not open to receiving it, we have very little, if anything at all.

I used to cringe whenever I was at a wedding and heard this passage from 1st Corinthians 13, simply because it is overused. But upon revisiting it, the powerful nature of the words rings out:

"If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

As i revisit these words today I realize their beauty and undeniable power. But still it seems that in our daily sometimes-mundane lives, it is hard to tap into this all-encompassing Love. Maybe it has to do with our childhood, when we experienced things that made ourselves put a shield up and close ourselves off to Love. Now we are adults and do not have to use that shield anymore. Opening up to Love requires a certain amount of vulnerability, because there's a chance you may get hurt. But there is an equal or greater chance that you will experience the Love that you've always wanted.

Tapping into Love may require a change in beliefs that you held onto for years which put limits on Love.

Experiencing Love may mean stepping out of your comfort zone and doing things that you have never experienced and which make you slightly uncomfortable. But the risk is worth it, as these experiences may lead the way to Love.

As part of my belief system, I believe that we all come from God, which is Love. If we saw more clearly our interconnectedness with everyone else around us, and realized that the stranger is also Love, our lives would be more filled with joy and peace.

We should both love our neighbour AND love ourselves, that is how we honour and love God.

It all comes down to Love.