What is Love? VI

Love is the master key that unlocks the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and most easily of all, the gate of fear.  - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Happiness is the China shop; Love is the bull.  - M.L. Mencken

And loves flame is superior to physical law in that, the less ventilation it has, the more fiercely it burns.

Love's fire, if it once goes out, is hard to kindle.

Love must be as much a light as a flame.  - Henry David Thoreau

Love is the wildcard of existence. - Rita Mae Brown

Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,
That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.  - George Chaoman

What is Love? V

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

What is Love? IV

What is Love? III

Love's as Warm as Tears

Love’s as warm as tears,
Love is tears:
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between
Hedges, where once was green

Love’s as fierce as fire, 

Love is fire:
All sorts–Infernal heat
Clinkered with greed and pride, 

Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,
Laughing, even when denied, 

And that empyreal flame 

Whence all loves came. 
 

Love’s as fresh as spring,
Love is spring:
Bird-song in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering “Dare! Dare!”
To sap, to blood,
Telling “Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best.” 

Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails: 

Blunt, thick, hammered through 

The medial nerves of One 

Who, having made us, knew 

The thing He had done,
Seeing (what all that is)
Our cross, and His. 


C.S. Lewis

What is Love? II

Love!  What is it?  What it is... it is, what?

Can Love be examined objectively, or is it necessarily subjective?  Is Love more like Truth -- universal and steadfast -- or is it more like a sweet dream -- vague and amorphous?

Love is the deepest desire of my soul... the need for Love.  But how do I quench this thirst?  How can I satiate the insatiable?  Can refreshment be found among broken cisterns?  How I desire to fill these dry wells myself...!  But my own well is scorched, fractured, and overflowing with dust.  Fill me!  But there is no water to be found within the desert.

I cry out for Love... and hear the sound of silence.  How do I search for what I cannot describe!  Does anybody else seek...?  Perhaps they have found!  But the melancholy... no, there are only shadows, dim reflections within a dark mirror.  If this is Love, then the pursuit... meaningless.

It must be a fable, a bed time story, a parable.  But the void in my heart demands satisfaction, demands belief until it has its fill... or death buries the urge.  Either way, peace.  Will Love then fall away?

Love.  What is Love?  No one can define it;

It's something so great, only God could design it;

Yes Love is beyond what man could define;

For Love is Immortal, And God's Gift is divine.

Where are you Love?

What is Love?

A feeling?  An emotion?  A force of nature?

Maybe it's a song or a story or a sign.  Maybe it's action... or is it reaction?  After all, "to love is Nothing, to be loved is Something, but to love and to be loved is Everything."  Everything... is love everything?

Maybe it is more than just one thing: pure, unconditional, deep, devoted, unending, perfect, blind, lost. Maybe it's experienced in the moment, maybe it's outside of time altogether.

Why ask?

 "The wise are wise because they love.  The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love."  Is love therefore of the heart rather than of the mind?  As they say, "if you've never lost your sanity, then you've never been in love."

Fear is of the mind, but love is of the heart.  Does perfect love not drive out fear?

What is love?