"Love, not of me..."

"...Love, not of you,
Love, not of me...
Come hold us up,
come set us free.
Not as we know it,
but as it can be.
Love's reality..."

Since writing Monday's post, "There is no difference..." I have been mulling over the questions it  posed for me.  Not just about mother-love, but about love in general.  And Sara Groves' "Love," which I used to keynote another post, earlier this year, has been a helpful reminder...on a number of levels.

Are there different "kinds" of love?  Are there variables in love?  Can you have a "lesser" version of Love?  Can human affection, which has its source in divine Love, the only Cause and Creator of all that bears Its name, be diminished by who, where, or how it is expressed...i.e. can love that is expressed by an aunt, camp counselor, or neighbor, be less than the love that is expressed by a mother or father?

If the Source is the same, can its derivitive be compromised, adulterated, diluted, watered-down by "how" it is expressed, or by whom?

After reading Monday's post a friend shared this:

"I read your post today. I am hesitant to mention this but a very,very wise friend of mine has told me, on more than one occasion, that there are not different kinds of love."

Hmmm...I know this...I have worked with this Truth, spoken it, applied it to so many situations...trusting Its veracity with deep spiritual conviction.  I have experienced the healing impact of this Truth in my own life...on countless occasions.  So, why then have I struggled so mightily with this question when it comes to motherhood?  

I don't think there's a good reason...just more of the same old lie of "less than All, in all" and I got snookered into considering it as reasonable...again.  Sigh.

So, instead of starting with an unreasonable question, I'm going to start with what I know about Love.  I know that Love is God.  And I know that God has only one measure, portion, variable...All...nothing less.  Period.

Just like water is water...a drop, a cup, or a bathtub full.  Love is always, at its essence, Love.  Mother love, the love we feel for our friends, the love that moves us to live generously, to care for our global neighbors unselfishly...it's all just Love in action as love. 

Just as a drop of water can be a snowflake, a jet of steam, a refreshing beverage, ice to skate on, the breath of life to a fish, while never losing its essential purity, clarity, and integrity as H2O...water.  Likewise, love, is never less than all Love, only Love...completely Love.

So...is there a difference?  A variableness in quality or quantity?   No, I really don't think its even possible.   How could there be a lesser version of love, and still bear the name of Love?  For love to be love, it must be as infinitely All, as its Source.

But, I also believe that Love is capable of expressing itself in infinitely individual (a word that comes from the root: not divided) forms of usefulness and beauty...like water expressing itself as steam, ice, clouds, rain, lakes, baths...etc.    However unique and individual, each of these forms is, and must continue to be fully, wholly, completely true to the essential integrity and allness of Love's inherent nature...never less. 

with all love...

Kate

"love, I made it mine..."

"love, I made it mine
I made it small,
I made it blind.
I followed hard,
only to find...
it wasn't love...
it wasn't love..."

I love this lyric from Sara Groves' "Love."  It speaks to how often I have walked around thinking that I was holding onto love as something I owned, only to discover that what I was holding on to so possessively -- wasn't love at all. 

For love to be holdable, it has to be small enough to fit in your hand, your heart, your home.  Anything you can possess, hold, or own is too small to be love -- since Love is infinite, eternal, the All-in-all.

Love isn't isolated, or isolatable. And because Love is infinite,  it must exist everywhere -- it must be universal.  Trying to possess love, is like trying to grasp a drop of water with your hand, while swimming in a river. 

Love is alive.  It is a moving current of selfless being.  It is never in static or inert.  And it is ever-surrendering the boundaries of its form to expand and include more.

For decades I tried to own love.  I wanted to be sure that the love I thought was mine -- was mine, and no one else's.  I wanted to be certain of it.  I needed constant assurance that it hadn't slipped through my fingers.  I thought that holding onto "my love," was absolutely crucial to my sense of security and peace.

But that desire to own love -- to possess it forever, reduced love to something that no longer resembled real love at all. 

John says that,

"There is no fear in love..."

And yet, I was always afraid. I was afraid that the "love" I thought was mine, was fragile, vulnerable, fleeting.  I worried every day -- with very little time off for good behavior -- that I needed to protect my love, to hang on to it, watch it, isolate it from infiltration. 

The real childlike love that had once lived, and danced in me -- with abandon -- was being reduced to something small and unrecognizable by my need to own it. I hoped to hold it forever, and tightly.  

In an article, simply titled, "Love," Mary Baker Eddy has this to say about this vast subject:

"No word [love] is more misconstrued; no sentiment less understood. The divine significance of Love is distorted into human qualities, which in their human abandon become jealousy and hate.
          
Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on  a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring  of the true metal."

Strong words...and not for the faint of heart.

When I was in high school, I loved a boy.  I thought he was the most lovely boy in the world.  I wanted him to love me.  I thought if I could get him to fall in love with me -- and then hold onto him forever -- I would be supremely happy. 

Well, I think he did really like me, perhaps he even loved me, but once I thought I had secured his exclusive affection, I worried every day that his love would fade away.  I worried that he would stop loving me, and start loving someone else. 

About that time, I became quite ill.  I went to see my Sunday School teacher. We talked about how I could pray for myself.  She asked me about my heart.  I thought it was a strange question.  But I ended up telling her about this boy I loved.   I thought that with her metaphysical support and guidance, I could  do something prayerfully that would assure his commitment to me.

And I also remember how conflicted I felt when this very wise woman said that love was like a butterfly.  You must let it light on you, but never try to hold it. 

She then reminded me that God is Love and that I could no more own someone's love, than I could own God.  She said that if I really loved this boy, I would want what God had planned for his life. If I loved him, I would want whatever was most right for him.    And then she took my hands in hers, and very gently said that I might not be that most right person.

She was right.  I was not always the "most right"  life-partner for those whom I loved, and wanted to have love -- and want -- me in return.  It took me a long time to realize this. But when I did, I began to learn a very important lesson in loving.  It's a lesson that's required my return to Love's laboratory over and over again. But in this laboratory I've come to understand that Love is a self-enforcing law.

For me it comes down to:

1.  If God isn't bringing something/someone into my life I don't want it. 
     And if He is, there is nothing I can do to undermine His will in our lives, and mess it up. 

2.  When you love someone you want what is most right for them. 
     Love means putting the other person's happiness and needs before your own -- even when it means letting go.

These are lessons that haven't always been easy for me to remember. But when I do, I feel the kind of genuine Love that pours from a fathomless well within my heart.  When I feel love as something unconditional -- and unreasonable -- something that is radiating out from me, rather than coming to me, I know it's the real deal.

As Sara sings:

"...Love, not of you,
Love, not of me...
Come hold us up,
come set us free.
Not as we know it,
but as it can be.
Love's reality..."

May love pour from every pore of your being this moment, and every moment of your loving.

with Love,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"...a bow of promise on the cloud..."

"Little darlin'
It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.
Little darlin'
It seems like years since it's been here.
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun,
and I say,
It's al right...."
- George Harrison

Since there is not (at least not one that I could find) a recorded version of my first choice song for this post, "Love," by Mary Baker Eddy,  I am going to lead with this hauntingly lovely James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma version of "Here comes the Sun," written by The Beatles' brilliant George Harrison.  But the story is still the same. 

It was almost twenty years ago, but I can still feel that sudden shift, a recalibration in the weight of my mental "air," whenever I think about that Sunday morning service in Valerie Lodge.  I'd been in my cabin all night wrestling with demons...and angels. I'd gotten a phone call, in the middle of the night, that threatened to take me so far down into a chasm of depression, that I wasn't sure I'd be able continue my work at camp that summer.  My heart was in shreds, and I could barely breathe.  I'd been caught in the middle of an emotional battleground all night.  One minute the angels of Love and peace were winning...and the next minute I'd become a ricocheting crossfire of anger, hurt, and regret. 

If you were to have painted a picture of my mental sky, it would have been as grey as slate, and as black as a battalion of thunderheads creeping over the western slopes of the Collegiate Peaks, on a late summer afternoon. 

I wasn't surprised the next morning, when I finally did leave my cabin, that it was actually overcast, and that heavy raindrops were beginning to splatter...darkening the pale, sun-bleached cedar decking that apron-ed Valerie Lodge.  I'd already missed breakfast, but I couldn't miss Sunday School. 

We gathered in the Lodge, while one of the campers played a prelude, and we moved chairs from the dining room, passed out hymnals, and got everyone settled.  The Sunday School superintendent announced that we'd be singing Mary Baker Eddy's poem, titled, "Love."  It barely registered on the landscape of my dark thoughts.  Then she read the poem, the pianist played through the melody, and then we stood to sing. 

I did not feel like singing.  I was not at peace.  I was in pain.  I hoped that I could get by with just listening to the rest of the congregation sing.  I thought that, perhaps, I could find some comfort in the sound of their voices.  And so,  while quietly wiping at my tears, and...hopefully...without notice, I stood in a cocoon of mixed sorrow and hope.  But, before long, I found myself singing along as if each word were the sacred building blocks of a prayer.   And, not surprisingly, I was finding comfort...and hope. 

But it wasn't the comfort I found in its words that shook me to my core, it was the promise, the hope that I found in this line:

'Twas Love whose finger traced aloud
a bow of promise on the cloud..."

Love wasn't going to paint a rainbow of promise on a clear, cloudless blue sky...but on a cloud.  Love was going to use my cloudy moments as a canvas for painting a promise...full of color, dimension, beauty.  I could count on it.  Without the cloud, love wouldn't have the droplets of water...my tears...to bounce and refract light off of.

My tears were going to color my life with beauty and texture.   I could count on it.

And, it wasn't just the words from the poem that gave me strength, but it was the poet herself.  Mary Baker Eddy had lived through so many days that were heavy with clouds of darkness and despair.  She had borne sorrow, rejection, disdain, and regret with grace.  She had suffered and survived, hoped and persevered, wept, worked, watched, and prayed.

If anyone knew how to navigate a personal storm, it was Mary Baker Eddy.  If anyone had the "street cred" necessary to inspire, encourage, and "call forth" the kind of inner resolve that, alone, could weather the seething sea of human crisis, it was Mary Baker Eddy. 

And I trusted her.  I trusted her honesty.  I knew that her poetry was wept with the purity of the Magdalene's tears, and written with meekness of the our Master's courage.

For almost two decades now, this simple statement:

'Twas Love whose finger traced aloud,
a bow of promise on the cloud..."

has given me a lens through which my darkest days have portended the greatest opportunity for Love's light to shine through my heart and become a multi-hued rainbow of promise. 

I did not leave camp early that summer.  Instead I discovered how beautiful life can be when love passes through the prism of our tears and paints the world with light, and color, and grace.

I hope that if you are feeling the lowering of clouds, you can find promise in Eddy's words.  Words she poured out in tears, to give each of us fresh hope.

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Here is the link, for those of  you who might prefer the more classic Beatles version of "Here Comes the Sun."

And for a rare performance by George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and Phil Collins here is another version of "Here Comes the Sun." 

"...love letters to God..."

"...The sky may be starless
The night may be moonless
But deep in my heart there's a glow
For deep in my heart
I know that you love me
You love me...
because you told me so..."

I remember Darby Tygraber's mom listening to the Nat King Cole album that included this song, Love Letters from Your Heart,  while she "ran the sweeper" around their Leavitt Brothers ranch-style house, in our 1950's suburban neighborhood.  The sweeper wasn't an electric vacumn cleaner. It was an enclosed dustpan with two bristly brushes that rotated and picked up dust and dirt when you pushed it along the carpet or floor using the long handle that was attached to it.  It was quiet, so listening to this album on the record player in the living room, while "running the sweeper," was actually doable in those days. 

Mrs. Tygraber was someone you could honestly refer to as "a lovely woman"...because she was.  She wore belted shirtwaist house dresses in pastel prints, stockings, pumps, pearls, and earrings when she cleaned, altering her outfit only slightly with a skirted apron when she cooked.  She was unconditionally kind.  She was the "genuine article." A pearl of great price...in pearls!!

To this day I can remember the way she would sing along with whatever was playing on the record player. Or how she would dry her hands on the red and white striped tea towl at her waist, toss it on the kitchen counter, untie her apron and drape it over the room divider on her way to the front door, whenever the doorbell rang. It was like watching Ginger Rogers dance to a well-choreographed segment in a musical...I am certain that she actually glided across the aqua cut-loop carpet as she made her way from the kitchen to the entryway without missing a beat. She opened the door to the Fuller Brush salesman with as much hospitality, warmth, and joy as she would greet a long-lost sibling.  My sister and I loved to go to their house after school.  It was as warm and cozy as our house, but with no babies or toddlers to hold, and feed, and try to keep from crying while our mom got dinner on the table. It was a refuge from the "romper room" of our house, and we loved it...and her.

Today, when I unexpectedly received an email, from a friend I hadn't heard from in the past six years, "Love Letter from Your Heart" was the song that popped into my head.  My friend's "voice" came as a gentle hand reaching out from a place I had not given myself permission to revisit for a long time.  Ours was a friendship that had been steeped in the waters of another chapter in my life, one filled with mission and purpose...one I loved dearly, but didn't know how to hold onto, while still trying to walk forward into a new space.

It wasn't that I hadn't thought of her...often...I did.  I just didn't know how to bridge time and distance and questions that didn't have easy answers.  But I discovered that , like Mrs. Tygraber, she knew how to open the door without pre-disposition or suspicion.  She just opened it with love. 

I also discovered that my friend had read this blog.  Perhaps once, perhaps more than once...it didn't matter...just the thought that we had connected for the briefest of moments somewhere in the ether, where my thoughts (recorded on this site) had united in the space of her heart (as she read them), was like an ember whispered upon by the softest breath of friendship and love.

She said, in speaking of this blog, that the posts were like "love letters to God, love letters to the world"....I wonder if she knew that her sweet message...less than five sentences long...was like a love letter to God, in my life.

We write love letters to God everytime we celebrate the beauty of friendship, the joy of surrendering self-interest in service to others, express courage in reaching out when it is scary, each time we support the blessings we see in another's life.  By doing so, we are acknowledging the presence of God in the lives of others...and therefore in our own consciousness by reflection - with appreciation and joy.  It is as if we are saying, "oh my dear Father-Mother, I see You and You are Wonderful in all the fullness of your Being...in her, and him, and them."

In her Miscellaneous Writings 1883 - 1896, Mary Baker Eddy states:

"Abiding in Love, not one of you can be separated from me; and the sweet sense of journeying on together, doing unto others as ye would they should do unto you, conquers all opposition, surmounts all obstacles, and secures success."

and elsewhere, in The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, she writes:

"Beloved Students: — Your letter and dottings are an oasis in my wilderness. They point to verdant pastures, and are already rich rays from the eternal sunshine of Love, lighting and leading humanity into paths of peace and holiness."

When we embrace someone in our hearts - whether it be in prayer, letter-writing, reading their heart's musings, phoning, texting, or even just appreciating them in memory - we invite them into the secret place of the most High...the consciousnesss of Love, reflected in our loving consciousness...of them.  And in this cherishing space we journey on together in fellowship, extending a divine embrace across the threshhold of time, timidity, and eternity.

So, tonight I am saying thank you to my friend (and friends)...for their love letters to God...and to me.  I think this is often how God reminds us, over and over again, that He loves us. Please accept this post as my return reply... 

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"All you need is love..." - a pledge

All you need is love,
all you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't
...where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

All you need is love,
all you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need.
All you need is love
...all together now
All you need is love
...everybody
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need."
-     Lennon/McCartney

Tonight my friend, James, posted this "I Pledge" video from Youtube (please don't miss watching it...just click on the title "I Pledge" in quotes) on his Facebook wall, and I liked it so much, that I plagi-posted it to my Facebook wall. But first, please let me state for the record, that for me, this video is not political, it is a compelling piece about what people are willing to pledge their lives to.

So, that said, soon a few of my girlfriends and I (at least the ones who were still awake at 12:30 in the morning) had a great "conversation" about what it is that we pledge our lives to. At first I listed off a number of things that I am committed to.  Among which were:  injuring no man, but blessing all mankind,  kindness, commiting to my own change, before I ask others to change, service to humanity, etc. 

But as our conversation evolved, and we each moved through the space of crafting our own pledges, I loved how my friend Michelle finally boiled hers down to this very simple sentence at the very end of a more lengthy statement:

"I pledge to Love"

I think it was what each of us was trying to say, but we were using way too many words. We were caught up in "more" -- more words, more ideas, more breadth of vision -- when that simple statement...more profound than anything that could have been carefully crafted by the wisest sage, or the most renowned philosopher...was absolutely perfect.  It reminded me of something Mary Baker Eddy said in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The depth, breadth, height, might, majesty,
and glory of infinite Love fill all space.
That is enough!"

And it is enough.  It is more than enough to ponder, to exercise, to live by, to hold ourselves accountable for...to pledge to.

Paul and John got it right..."All You Need is Love" I don't know that it is always easy, but I do know that it is all we need. It's all that we ever need. It is enough...

So, tonight this is all I will say:

"I pledge to Love"

yes, it is enough...always,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Trouble me..."

"Trouble me, disturb me
with all your cares and your worries.
Trouble me on the days when you feel spent.
Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden
when my back is sturdy and strong?
Trouble me..."
- Natalie Merchant

I'll post the rest of the lyrics to 10,000 Maniac's "Trouble Me" below with the Youtube video, but when my dear friend Nancy sent it along this morning with a note: "...it's why we do what we do...eh?" all plans for writing today's post with another song as the springboard, were springboarded right out the window.  This was the song.

Yes, this is why we do what we do isn't it my sweet friend?  Nancy is a Christian Science nurse, in fact she is the nurse I wrote about a couple of years ago in  "Nursing...and the law of kindness". 

I am always surprised when someone apologizes after calling for help...especially on Christmas Day -- or in the middle of the night.  Helping others is what Christmas day...and every day...is all about for those of us who have devoted our full-time to serving as spiritual healers and caregivers. I can't think of anything I'd rather do than get a call from someone who needs to feel fellowship in God's love.  It is such a privilege and joy to be invited to pray with them...bearing witness to God's presence in their lives as living, breathing, palpating Love...any moment of any day.  Just ask my husband and children.  And I somehow feel that each of my fellow practitioner, nurse, and military chaplain colleagues must feel the same way.  This is why we do what we do.

As Mary Baker Eddy says in her article, "Love" from Miscellaneous Writings 1883 - 1896:

"Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf.  I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results.  Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal.  Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power. 

As a human quality, the glorious significance of affection is more than words:  it is the tender unselfish deed done in secret; the silent, ceaseless prayer; the self-forgetful heart that overflows the veiled form stealing on an errand of mercy, out of a side door; the little feet tripping along the sidewalk; the gentle hand opening the door that turns toward want and woe, sickness and sorrow, and thus lighting the dark places of the earth."

This healing work of love is not heavy labor, it is a gift, a never-ending, perpetually inspiring, always smile-producing gift. It "happifies existence." It keeps Christmas in our hearts each and every day. It is the "unto us a child is born" that moves within us. It is the real "rapture" and it never ceases to take my breath away.

Through the years I have had the privilege of working with many nurses, chaplains, and practitioners whose care and affection for humanity is just as tireless and true, joy-filled and selfless as this article suggests...and I have been deeply blessed by their example of charity and compassion.   Nancy is one of them. 

Here is a link to the song Nancy sent along with her note... please enjoy "Trouble Me" by Natalie Merchant.

Trouble Me
lyrics by Natalie Merchant

Trouble me, disturb me
with all your cares and you worries.
Trouble me on the days when you feel spent.
Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden
when my back is sturdy and strong?
Trouble me.

Speak to me, dont mislead me,
the calm I feel means a storm is swelling;
Theres no telling where it starts or how it ends.
Speak to me, why are you building this thick brick wall
to defend me when your silence is my greatest fear?
Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden
when my back is sturdy and strong?

Speak to me.
Let me have a look inside these eyes
while Im learning.
Please dont hide them just because of tears.
Let me send you off to sleep with a there, there,
now stop your turning and tossing.
Let me know where the hurt is and how to heal.

Spare me? dont spare me anything troubling.
Trouble me, disturb me with all your cares and you worries.
Speak to me and let our words build a shelter from the storm.
Lastly, let me know what I can mend.
Theres more, honestly, than my sweet friend, you can see.
Trust is what Im offering if you trouble me.

Thank you to everyone who has ever let me sit with you in the middle of the night, on Christmas day, or any moment of any day of any year...you have blessed my life with your call. And dear Nancy, thank you for this reminder of "why we do what we do...all my love,
Kate