Beautiful Belongings

I just love the NEW BOOKS table at our local library.  If I am in a hurry, I simply choose one or two random books from the table, and occasionally I am delighted with my selection.  The books on the NEW BOOKS table are not always new; they are just new to our library.  The books are also seasonal, such as diet and exercise in January or love and marriage in February.

This past week, I selected a book entitled Words for the Wedding – the revised and updated 2011 version by Wendy Paris and Andrew Chesler.  According to the jacket summary, the book “presents hundreds of classic and contemporary poems, quotes, quips and blessings from the Buddha to Bono.”  So I checked it out, mainly for the quotes.   

What a surprise!  I had expected traditional and modern ceremony readings, including the exchanging of vows, wedding prayers or sample toasts.  What I found instead, just in time for Valentine’s Day, was a celebration of love in all of its varying stages, forms and expressions.  OMG!!  My most favorite passage is written by Roy Croft, a 20^th-century American poet, and is simply entitled “Love.”

I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.  I love you for the part of me that you bring out; I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the lights all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.  I love you because you are helping me to make of the lumber of my life, not a tavern, but a temple; out of the works of my every day, not a reproach, but a song.  I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.  You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign, you have done it by being yourself, perhaps that is what being in love means, after all.

WOW!  “I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the lights all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.”  How could the fragrance of a dozen roses or the sweetness of the most expensive chocolates ever say more than those perfectly-written words?  The “heaped-up heart” and the “beautiful belongings”  ~~ such perfectly-illustrated phrases that portray the power of true love.  CLICK!  Love, for me, now has an image!  

Years ago I made my first trip to my Grandmother’s trunk.  When the trunk was opened to me for the first time, I saw everything. I noticed safety pins, rubber bands, newspaper clippings, and all the "heaped-up"  junk that was so visible on that top layer; however, after four or five visits, I “dimly” noticed those “foolish, weak things.”  I was much too anxious to set aside that top layer and and pull out all the “beautiful belongings” from the very bottom of that trunk!

Everyone in my family has experienced that top-layer love.  Love opens up to us for the first time, and all we notice is the unimportant stuff.  We build taverns ~ places where one pays for accomodations and refreshments.  We are drunk with emotion and amused by entertainment; however, taverns are built for travelers and transients and tourists.  We pass through, collecting memorabilia and souvenirs that are "heaped-up" like empty beer bottles.  All we see are the reproaches of our foolishness, and we pray that the "lumber of our life" is not completely wasted.

Then, "without a touch, without a word, without a sign", being in love changes.  The "foolish, weak things" become dim and the "beautiful belongings" are brought to light.  I have no words to describe what takes place or what is different. I only know that being in love is no longer a vacation residence or a cheap hangout or a roadside tavern.  Love is a sanctuary, love is a sacred place, love is a temple...love is a song.

What a wonderful world this would be if we all learned to love this way.  I believe that when we “draw out” the best in those around us, we lay aside or pass over the insignificant stuff.  In that process, love causes a transference that is no less than miraculous.  Those “foolish, weak things” in our own lives tend to grow dim as well… “that is what being in love means, after all.”

Dianne <3