There is no "out of love." It's what we are, deeper and richer than all the spiritual promises and far more ordinary and real. We don't "fall in or out of love" because we are permanently in the flow of love itself. Love is the way we are meant to live; love is the measure of the meaning of life ... When we touch life with love, it grows warm and shines down the corridors of the mind with a light that does not fade but grows brighter and more beautiful with the years.
When love is present nothing is the same. Even the drab gray walls of this prison begin to glow. It's as if we are transported into a different world, love's world. Then things are seen through love's eyes. Then the pain may turn into a poem, and the sorrow may blossom as a ministry.
Love is what shines from our eyes, beats from our heart, speaks with our voice, and meets itself everywhere. Sooner or later, love will reclaim us all. But to let that happen now, to die into love now, before the body dies ... Ah!
We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and
dying. Water knows this, clouds know this. Soil and rocks know they are dancing in a continuous giveaway of making, unmaking, and making again the earth.
Our elders say that ceremony is the way we can
remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift that we must pass on, just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we'll need will be for mourning. For the passing of polar bears, the silence of cranes, for the death of rivers and the memory of snow.
