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I am a toddler, a child, a teenager, an adult, a singleton, an item, married, a parent, an empty-nester, and a granddad.  I am employed and unemployed, promoted and demoted.  I am rent-free and rent bound, mortgage bound and mortgage free.   I am happy and sad, content and discontent.  I am alone and surrounded.  My life seems to remain the same but never is.  My living the same.  My beliefs too.  One thing has been constant my whole life throughout everything that has changed and keeps changing …

I am.  Loved and loving.

The only thing about love that changes?

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My choice to love and be loved.  My decision to allow.  My courage or fear of love and loving.  Love is enabling and empowering and liberating like nothing else I have ever known.  Money comes close.  Except money alone is binding and demanding.  But money shared with another is enabling and empowering …

And we are back to love.

Love Me.  Love you.  Love All.

I have learned that I cannot love without first loving me. Or else being loved is  claustrophobic – binding – restrictive.  But when I love me first of all … Then I cannot be restricted – bound – claustrophobic.    If I love myself I am kind and gentle with me as with those around me that I love.  If I love me I can say yes and no to myself in all and every circumstance.  But with kindness. 

And kindness rubs off.

I have learned that I can love you after I have learned to love me.  I can remove my fences and boundaries that keep you close.  I can take away the conditions that mean I will “love you” only if you “love me”.   That a diamond will buy love.  That a diamond given is love.  That love is an ever-demanding devourer of “stuff”.  If I love me and can love you the greatest gift I can give me and you is freedom to be.  Space to become.

Kindness to forgive.

I have learned that I can love all.  For love is not yes or no.  Love is not giving or  yielding all the time.  Love is not all this cleverly marketed transaction of popular song and sexy advertising and those glittering price-tagged dreams.   Love is kindness.  Is the strength to allow.  Is the strength to defend.  Is the stamina of being.   Is being that oozes through every breath and deed … every word and silence … through every sharing and solitude …

Is the being of kindness.

The “greatest of these” really is the greatest of these.  So much more than “a command” to be endlessly debated.   So much more than naff words or staged pictures or crafted songs or laboured poems.  So much more than even life itself.  For love is greater even than death.

Or else grief would be an “indulgence”.

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These posts of this global community – of religious and atheist – of upbeat and downcast – of faith and different faith – of life and death – of living and dying – of anger and laughter – of every facet of living I find in every moment of life …

Without exception ALL are of love.

All have love at their heart.

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I desire that we focus on love rather than debate. 

On kindness rather than right.  On curiosity rather than correctness.  On allowing rather than demanding.  On communion rather than weaponry.  On connecting rather than disconnecting.  For we all are already experts in love.  We need no sacred writings.  We need no manuals.  We need no relationship tutoring.

Just love.  Me.  You.  All.  First me.  Then You.  Then All.

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Gone would be the desperate cry of “But I am NOT binary!”  Gone would be the scream of fear.  Silent would be the snarl of anger.  Absent would be the “need” to inflict pain and suffering.  Of myself.   Of you.  Of all.

Perhaps even of the planet.  Perhaps even of God.  Perhaps even my neighbour.  The stranger.  The different to me.  The needier than me.  The richer than me.  The weirder than me.  The not the same as me.

Love without condition is power.

So much so that it scares the shit out of most.

And that isn’t love at all.

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