Sunday, November 18, 2001


                   LOVE, like everything else that we experience is demonstrated by our thoughts and beliefs about it.  We know without a doubt that God Is Love but are we truly convinced of the nature of Love as it is expressed on the individual level?  If we take a few moments to contemplate Love, we can reach a stronger awareness of it in our mind.  Emerson wrote that Love is a synonym for God and Walter Starcke writes that Love heals and is the only thing that does.  Okay so, Love Is God and God Is Love.  Assuming this is true, how then do we experience this thing called Love on a personal level?

            God is that impulse within us that desires to Love and to be Loved and we know that we are created in the "image and likeness of God" from the Book of Genesis.  In other words, we are a reflection of God at the level of our awareness of this Truth.  In order to experience Love, we must reflect the Love that God Is consistently and with a "spirit" of Love that dissolves anything unlike Love from our consciousness.  In the Book of John we can read, "perfect Love casts out all fear."  As we embody the idea of Love and demonstrate it with our "feelings and words" we can release all things that separate us from the loving experiences that we seek.  After all, if God Is Love and God Is Omnipresent, Love must always Be Present in our Life.  If we don't feel it or experience it, then all we must do is align ourselves with it in a greater and more persistent way.  God Is Spirit and God Is Life, to reflect this image and likeness we must get into the spirit of things in order to experience them fully.

           Love is not elusive, it is an "attracting energy."  When we embody Love passionately and fully, we automatically attract more Love in our experiences.  But many of us shy away from expressing our passion because we have experienced relationships and marriages that did not live up to our ideas of what a loving relationship would be.  Or, we have allowed the concepts and beliefs associated with relationships and marriage to limit us in our capacity to desire them.  Either way, if we are in a relationship that needs to have a little more "sizzle" added to it, or if we are desiring to have a loving, intimate relationship, there is definitely work to be done.  But, it is exciting work, joyful and loving.  It is the creative work of the Spirit within each of us, it is the essence of the Divine Joy within that we must release to live life fully.  

           Love is as natural to express as any other creative expression and we should really get into the spirit of it as Solomon did with the Queen of Sheba . . . . . . from the Song of Solomon Chapter 7:  "¹ How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. ² Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies. ³ Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. ⁴ Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rab'bim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus. ⁵ Your head crowns you like Carmel, and your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses. ⁶ How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden! ⁷ You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. ⁸ I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches. Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, ⁹ and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth. ¹⁰ I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. ¹¹ Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields, and lodge in the villages; ¹² let us go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. ¹³ The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and over our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved."

          This passionate prose is not from a novel or a movie, it is from the Bible.  This is the passion that great romances are made of and the relationships that last a lifetime.  If we are to have an exciting, passionate, intimate relationship, we must be willing to "use our words" to declare that it is so.  We must be willing to "lose ourselves" in the creating of it.  Solomon's words are genuinely from the soul and he "let" them erupt from his Inner Being with passion and excitement.  He expected to have a "romance of a lifetime," and he did.

            Our "imprisoned splendor" is the essence of the creative, passionate impulse of Spirit unhindered in Its expression of Love.  Passionate, exciting relationships are not for the timid or the shy.  They are for those who willingly "lose themselves" in the passion that emanates from the depths of their Soul.  This "imprisoned splendor" is within each of us and Love is calling it forth...... find yourself somebody to love.... let them know how passionately you love them ..... and give them your love.... all the love you can give.  
                  
 And So It Is!             
                                                            
 
Letting Love use me in Its own Good Way,
Henry Lee Bates