Are you in love?

Loving Life

“You are young.  So you know everything.  You leap into the boat and begin rowing.  But listen to me.  Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul.  Listen to me.  Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me.  There is life without love.  It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe.  It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied.  When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks---when you hear the unmistakable pounding---when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and streaming---then row, row for your life toward it.”

                                                                        West Wind #2

                                                                        Mary Oliver

            Love---such a misunderstood word.  Mary Oliver tells us that unless we have it, our lives are not worth a scuffed shoe.  What does she mean?  Is she referring to the type of romantic love that is depicted in the soap operas on daily television?  Is it the sort of blind obsession in which one is so besotted with the other that they fling their own life to the wind and follow wherever that one leads?  Maybe I’m just jaded, but I don’t think that’s quite it.

            The kind of love that Mary Oliver’s prose poem is about, I believe, may not have anything to do with a significant other.  Instead, it is the burning passion that causes you to spring out of the bed in the morning to worship the sun streaming through your window.  It is the enthusiastic momentum that propels you into the day filled with excitement and anticipation.  It is the sheer jubilation of being alive.  It is love of life---your life, specifically.

            Being infused with robust optimism is the most health sustaining way to live.  If you do not love your life, then by all means, do whatever it takes to change it.  What could be worse than waking up everyday dreading what you face?  No job, no relationship, nothing is worth wasting the life God has given you.

            Love of another is beautiful when it is life giving, but love of life is a prerequisite for a long and happy existence.  What will you do to celebrate your one precious life today?

                                                            Keeping the faith,

                                                            Jane