Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Can One Define Love?


To try and wrap words around such a phenomenological experience as LOVE, is something that has been attempted by far better minds than mine, for centuries, with as little success.

There are brief moments when insight seems to be within my reach, and then it drifts away; and striving to grasp it is like trying to catch and hold the beauty of a soap bubble. I am finally getting that it is silly to try. This profound experience is not about facts or proof or intellectualized, tangible reality. It is, not unlike the Tao, ineffable.

It is disturbing for me though --being someone who has always used words as a protection, as a way to corral, identify and explain-- to consider just FEELING the feelings.

Can I let go of my need to line my feelings up behind words?  Aren't words needed to clarify the feelings, justify the feelings, make the feelings real?

Besides, what might happen if I let my feelings go naked, without always having to clothe them with words? What will happen if I leave my feelings without a fence of words around them that tells them where they belong?

Mightn’t I simply fly apart into a million pieces!?                                    Oh, well!

Like the glitter in a fairy globe,
   the fluid of my world
       swirls and sparkles around me
           Confounding, confusing,
                                             delighting me.
O my God!
Don’t ask me to speak
   until the dizzying glow subsides—
        ‘til all the shimmering
settles quietly
   to the bottom.
 
Then I can think clearly again.
      (And it is so important to think clearly.
                              Isn’t it?)

On the other hand. . .
   Oh to be stirred up continually
        and never
              have to settle
                     again!

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