Today's Quotation: Do everything you can to preserve and protect love so that it endures forever. Jennifer Smith, The Unveiled Wife Today's Meditation: Love cannot endure on its own... it needs our committed efforts to sustain it and keep it alive. Just as any other gift we possess, love requires us to develop it--to grow it and to use it. If I am a gifted singer, then I must practice, and develop my skills, and then above all... I must sing. This understanding encourages me to ask myself this question each day, "How much time and effort am I putting into preserving love in my life today?" Unlike our gifts and talents, the ability to love is given to all equally. You and I both have the same capacity to love, and to be loved. But we have to do so or that "gift" will not grow... and it will not be there for us when we need it most in our lives. When we take care of our love, however, it comes to strengthen our relationships with one another. Moreover, it becomes a friend--a comforter--for when we are at our lowest points in our life. When we are filled with a "love that endures forever," we have nothing to give but love to others in our lives, even if they mistreat us. Love is a way of living our lives to the fullest; and when we are in tune with it, it can be an unstoppable force of goodness, generosity, mercy, and good will. But we must remember to give it our attention each day, lest it wilts like a malnourished flower and fades away. Today's Challenge: Build up and strengthen the love you hold within. Questions to consider: Why do we say that "love is a verb?" Can love exist without our actions to preserve it? Think about the love in your life. Do you nurture it enough, or do you store it away in a box where it appears safe and alone? How can we separate our ideas of true love from our ideas of romantic--or even sexual--love? For further thought: Love is not just another attitude.... Love is actually what we are. It is a step beyond attitude. It is a shift in consciousness. Michael Exeter
