Firsts-20190915 - Love and loving – musing on journeying

Firsts-20190915 - Love and loving – musing on journeying

These past seconds into minutes, into hours, into days, into weeks, into months, into a year, have drawn my spirit into introspection … some might call it soul-searching. Actually as I ponder it, this feels more like the image James Weldon Johnson holds up in his poem about Creation: God stepped out in space, and said, “I’m lonely! I’ll make me a world!”

I believe in companionship, the gentle, fulfilling, completing of human spirits through relationship with another human soul that is deeply rooted in respect, loving, and being loved and treasured, companionship and  contentment, and delight and passion. I have known all of that in all its rich light, and through dark struggles which challenged on every side. 

But what does it mean … the foundation, the strong rock upon which all is held together … love and loving? 

So I entered deep inside … into my heart and soul, and mind … remembering, reflecting, seeking after depthed-meaning and insight. I am seeking to understand the turmoil and uncertainties in my own heart and mind. Wanting to separate out true insight and gift for the future, from wishful thinking. Longing to distinguish between hoping that is prompted simply by the pain of grief and loss and simply wanting to fill up an unwelcome emptiness (which can be read in reflections on missing pieces in the emerging puzzle that is life). 

And so, I make a start … a beginning, not necessarily ‘the beginning’. This is me! Not all of me, but as much as I can discern at this time. Paraphrasing the purpose of the crew of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek… I seek to go boldly where this human has never gone before! Read on … 

———————————————————————
I used to write letters
Lots of letters
Every day … letters

And she to me – Ciddy that is!

Actually, 
it was more that:
she (Ciddy that is) wrote to me, 
and I responded, 
usually … 
well eventually – though never long after.

We wrote about everything … 
From the mundane (and possibly foolish) …
to the deeply personal.
From the ordinary …
to the profoundly spiritual.
From work and school …
to parents and siblings.
From things we often could not speak about face-to-face …
to things we couldn’t stop speaking about.
From hopes to dreams … 
and back again!
Of love and loving … 
and discovering its wonder and grace

I have no memory of a magic moment when I fell in love …
though she (Ciddy that is), always claimed it was, for her, from when we first met … age 14.5
She, (Ciddy that is), also claimed that I was simply a slow learner, which prompts a question:
Is “love” something you ‘fall into’ or is it ‘learned’? 
Not ‘learned’ from books or that kind of reasoned study, 
or mindful intent, 
but from experience!

Does love and loving appear, like a volcano birthing a new island – 
heat and energy,  
fearful ... but eventually (or from the beginning) beautiful? 

Is love and loving nurtured gently into being like a fragile plant – 
cultivated, 
sheltered, 
held gently and patiently?

Or ... is love’s source like that miraculous first cell, full of potential and the unimaginable …
dividing into 2, and then 4, 8, 16, 
and …, 
and …, 
until in the fullness of time …
love that is at once adventurous and dangerous, 
new and ancient ...
is birthed into lives and nothing is ever the same – for either? 

Or … is love like the DNA helix … a curling, inter-twining complex of them all? 

Or ... maybe love is more random chaos theory, than definable, clear, and explainable. 
Closely related to the mass of a pile of jigsaw pieces which, 
eventually, 
after much thought, 
consideration, 
trial and even error …
  builds into a wholeness which overflows into, 
through and 
out of 
the entire lives 
of real people … 
I still don’t know!

But … death interrupts love …
doesn’t it?

Separation and absence mean it is somehow lost, or taken away … 
don’t they?

Or is that first love, in my case only love, so all encompassing and 
such a much part of me 
that there is no place for renewed love, 
no room for newly discovered love and loving
for the sublime emergence of that subtle, 
almost unnoticeable love which
like mist on the low hills or moors
envelopes, blinds, confuses … 
and sometimes frightens …
but is beautiful

Or the possibility even of that cataclysmic overwhelming tsunami of certainty that ‘this’ IS ‘it’!

Conversation, opinion, attitudes and expectations often seem to affirm all of these:
Any new love must somehow displace the ‘other’ love and loving!
There must be separation, almost denial, 
a proper ending, 
and a new, 
unconnected beginning! 
Expectations that are almost biblical in their certainty: 
“The old has passed away, behold, everything has become new!”

But, as time passes and the jigsaw of my life-journey takes new shapes and colours …
my heart says this is not possible ... 
such expectations are unreal, 
unnecessary, 
and unthinkable!

If those things simply cannot be relied on to shape living and loving, then what can?

Love and loving are such grace and gift that there can be no boundaries to them. 
No restrictions on their inevitable flow, 
Their bountiful life-giving,
Their honouring of person and relationship.

No boundaries of intimacy, companionship, the delight of ‘being with’ and ‘for’ the other.
Communication emerges from depthed-being – it borders on telepathic.

No restricting of bountiful laughter and long-suffering patience, lovingkindness and protective compassion. 

None!

So … how can I/we know that ones’ life is pregnant with or birthing new love?
Where are the signs, the indicators,  
by which love and loving can be measured, 
when so much time and experiences, 
journeying and memories, even identity, 
are bound up in and even shaped into meaning by that love …
and the lover now so deeply missed? 

How does that happen? Where does the journey begin?

And is age a factor to be seriously taken into consideration?

Can or does potential life-expectancy hinder or form some kind of essential block to be ignored at peril of the very relationship for which the spirit cries in longing and hope from deep within?

How soon is too soon to know that a line has been crossed, and the way forward is life-giving, and love nurturing … and plainly right? 

And how long delaying or not recognising the gifts that are already lavishly given, is too long, and what is birthing, becomes death-in-utero – where new love which is emerging, withers and dies ?

What I do know is that love is boundless. Love itself cannot be claimed, guaranteed, or laid out with certainty. 
That I know from experience. 
That is imprinted in my being, my DNA. 
That is in my heart and embedded in my faith.

What I do know is that while it takes two to be ‘in love’, those two are ‘ones’ who must know love, loving, and being loved, which must be sought, welcomed, cherished and breathed in like life-giving breath. 
Kindred spirits … Soul-mates. 

They are adventurers, 
with their eyes and hearts on each other’s well being. 
Pioneers, 
powered by healthy spirits, 
wearing inner peace, 
energised by passion for life, 
and commitment to each other’s continued growth and being. 
They are travellers-with-purpose, on their life journeys.

I will know in my heart when I have found mine … kindred spirit, soul-mate … that is … a conviction thought over, wrestled with, denied, unsought but rising anyway.

But those questions somehow need answers … and that requires courage to ask them, and 
willingness to seek answers together … and to accept them with grace and thankfulness. 

But I want to be so. I long for this to be truth-for-us-both. 
I pray for the birthing of such mutual affection, 
and rich loving, 
with one who can read my face unseen! Incha ‘
Incha ‘Allah – If God (who is love) wills it!
  


©️amf20190915 

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