When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw "the tree with the lights in it." It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I'm still spending that power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
Love is something which IS. Not having to be talked about, it expresses itself in your life as naturally as breathing. Reflecting itself in your being and attitude, it is the real you. Love is the Beloved within you. Love is absolutely free. It can never be boxed up, for that is not divine love; that is human possessive love which cannot withstand the stresses and strains in life. Divine love is limitless and able to withstand anything. The little self and its reactions are pushed out of the way when divine love flows freely in and through a soul. With pure love in your heart you can go anywhere, face anyone, for you have within you the strength of God's divine love.