Love

»Ah but he doesn't care for her--not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of. He's NOT in love with her.«

Never be embarrassed to talk about hallowed things, like love and death. We Americans are a little finicky about both. We reduce love to sex and talk about it clinically as in Kinsey and the sex books, or grossly as in Playboy and Penthouse, or sentimentally as in the popular songs. There´s very little talk about the tragic side of love, the comic side of love, love as a discipline, love as a means of education, love as the end and aim of education, the very reason we´re here today.
And as for death, wie hide from it, pretty it up, pack it away in hospitals, spend millions every year on lavish funerals, or get so glutted with it over the media that we hear or read, with hardly a tremor, about hundreds of thousands dying in Vietnam, or Africa, or Bangladesh.

About love & hate ?
Mom says they're merely words written on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper.

Speacking within the realm of human beings on this earth, love is the most unique, inclusive, powerful, commonality we have. Next is hope, for hope is what has kept us all from committing suicide that one time when you thought there was no love in the world, and questioned the very desire for existence. The last is faith, for only in faith can we believe in the unseen forces of love and hope.

Love doesn't exist. It's all hype. There's sex, there's like, there's passion and there's power (or the lack thereof) – but love is a rumour perpetrated by greetings card manufacturers and writers of fairy tales. What a disservice we do ourselves by refusing to face this reality; by plunging headlong, eyes wide open, into the morass of conflicting feelings that we have been hoodwinked into believing is lurve!

And now, let me show you the most excellent way.

If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prphecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always procects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where thre are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongeus, they will be stifled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a chid, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

-1Corinthians Ch. 13

A »cup« that is never empty. A patience that never runs thin. A love that doesn't diminish. An idea whose time has come. A dream of a dreamer.

Love ... Love can be so beautiful!!!
But love can also cause the hardest pain you ever had :-(

I refuse to accept all this Blaster pessimism about love. No wonder we're in such a 'hateful' mess, with so many people indulging in self-fulfilling prophecies and cynicisms about the uselessness and death of all the gentler feelings, respect, affection, understanding, love...

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.

(John Ciardi)

Love is like a series of interconnecting circles. The most circles that overlap with your beloved, the more likely you are to love him/her. You can connect physically, emotionally, sexually, intellectually, and spiritually. If you connect on all 5 levels, wow!