some thoughts on Love

Love is the highest form of human expression that I can imagine.  To love is to express the highest form of my own humanity.  So how I love is an expression of my identity. 

How I love expresses my gender, my sexuality, my spirituality.  I believe that loving others is an essential part of my purpose in this lifetime…perhaps in every lifetime.

The ones that I love, my beloveds, are not all human, though most of them are.  The forms of love are as diverse as my beloveds.

My love for my companion (the feline with whom I share our home) takes the form of caring for his needs, and considering how my magick, or adventures, will affect him. If I will be gone from my home for any length of time, I need to arrange to have another person (whom he trusts) to care for him.  When I do magick for our home, I need to consider the impact upon his ability to journey (on the astral) and his feelings about who may enter our home (both seen and unseen).  I need to make time to spend with him cuddling and playing and of course providing him with a clean, warm and comfortable nest, clean water, good food and mental stimulation.  I care for his needs, for his wellbeing.  That is how I express my love for him.

My love for my children, coven-mates, human family and tribe takes the form of words and actions.  I tell my children that I love them, that they are valued, cherished, beautiful, talented, intelligent people.  I encourage them to follow their own hearts and to believe in themselves.  I support them in their own sovereignty.  I remind them that they can make decisions about their own lives and that they will have my support regardless of my agreement with those decisions.   I also try to teach them not to hide from their own power, not to fear taking risks not to fear making mistakes.  My love for them is not predicated upon the ideal of perfection. 

My love for my lovers is according to their needs and mine.  I love their strengths and their shadows.  I love them in their weakness and in mine.  And if one of us should make a mistake, it is forgiven.  Love is not earned.  Love does not require perfection.  Love is given and accepted in unequal measure beyond all reason.  There is no ledger to balance.  No accounting to make. 

If all I can do is to hold my loved one’s hand or listen to him breathe or purr, then that is what love will do.  If my beloved needs something from me, it is but theirs to ask. 

Love gives according to the need.  It loves the truth of the beloved.  Even love for self.  I cannot hate the weakness in myself if I am to love the weakness in my beloveds.  Love must allow for imperfection and strive for acceptance. 

I have learned only in these past few months what it means to be loved without fear, that I am loved beyond reason.  That making a mistake will not result in rejection and abandonment.  That being weak does not make me unworthy of loving or being loved.  I have learned to stop hating that part of me that is weak.  I have learned to reject the idea that perfection is required.

I am learning to love in truth.  Blessed be.