I hope that many of you remember the wonderful vocal group – The Fifth Dimension. I recently treated myself to an indulgence and downloaded onto my i-pod an album of theirs. Yesterday, I was listening to the album, and one of my favorites came on. “Never my love.” If you haven’t heard it in a while and have access to the song do yourself a favor and go off into a quiet space and listen to it again.
Listening got me to thinking about the phenomena of love. God’s vast and confounding mystery is the purpose of our creation. We have all experienced it in some form – our mother’s arms, a young child’s trusting hand in ours, a true love’s caress, or a best friend’s forgiveness and understanding.
Love is often frightening. It challenges our illusions of control, and demands an openness and trust that our often wounded hearts find hard to summon. It requires humility, an anomaly in this age of self-interest. But when we give in to love it lifts us up like no other feeling. We give up competing, fear, anger, and our own views, and we experience a freedom that is beyond understanding. That’s right when we lose control while we love, we learn freedom.
Freedom is obedience to the element for which we were created. That element of creation is love for all beings, all things, and most importantly for God.
Dear Webb,
You knocked this one out of the park. I absolutely loved it, and it capped off an otherwise outstanding day. Thank you, thank you, dear friend.
Your friend
Tom