Love cures. It cures those who give it and it cures those who receive it.
–Dr. Karl Menninger
I read this quote recently, and the great gong of truth resounded within me. Love is the sacred part of life, the immortal part. Sometimes love ignites at first sight and other times it takes years to bloom. But true love, whatever its form, is healing to the very core.
Not long ago, my daughter found a two-week-old abandoned kitten on the street and took it in to feed it until it was old enough to go to a shelter. Needless to say, now that kitten rules my daughter’s roost. It brought so much love into the house and loves my daughter with a fierceness of a feline a hundred times her size, and my daughter loves her right back. None of this big love was on the planet the day before that cat came in from the cold. Odd, isn’t it? Love, made fresh every day, out of so little.
Like you, dear Reader, I’ve had close friends and family die, leaving me lost without them, but never did I stop loving them, and amazingly, when I stop to feel it I can feel love aimed at me from I know not where, but I do know who. Not generic love, but specific love. Intense, surprising, mysterious. It roots me out of myself and inspires me. Ageless, endless, everlasting love.
I have confused lust with love on more than one regrettable occasion, but on the whole I have been lucky and have loved many people and creatures. And even though I am of the Baby Boomer generation, I still want more. Grandchildren. Puppies. Kittens. Friends. Even love that shakes the nerves and rattles the brain!
Where do you find this sacred stuff? Please don’t tell me on the internet.
Read another guest blog post by Jane titled On Writing.