The shapes and forms of love change, but the love remains.
Love is a beautiful journey of letting go.
The following is a love letter I wrote to love:
I commit to love. To planting seeds of love deep in the earth, trusting they will be cradled and held. I commit to doing my part to nurture these seeds of love. These seeds of love will turn into trees whose fruits I can enjoy in the future. Under these trees I can relax, sit, seek refuge, comfort, and remember myself. Trees others can enjoy, picknicks can be had, love can be made, children can be brought into this world, first kisses can be shared, stars shooting across the sky can be seen, tree houses can be built on.
I commit to love. To watering the seeds that have sprouted and are already growing. The garden of love that is already here, flowering. In this garden of love there are many colors, smells, sizes and shapes, all different, all love. Taking care of this garden includes churning the soil and picking out the weeds. I commit to nurturing and maintaining these flowers, plants, trees of love. I know that some plants won’t make it through the winter, some flowers may wither in the heat of the sun, some trees may get infections and die. I trust that when they return to the earth they will nourish the rest of the garden of love, for no love is shared in vain, and all love simply feeds more love. This is the sacred cycle of life. When I pull out the weeds from my garden of love, I do so with purpose, with intention. To protect what I hold sacred, what I want to see grow. So I commit to protecting love.
As these seeds grow, I have no idea the intensity of the fragrance of the flowers, I can’t imagine how each pettle and leaf will look, I can’t begin to guess in what direction each branch will grow, the different marks on the barks of the trees, the various bumps on each trunk. I don’t know the shape and form love will take. And I don’t need to know. I commit to love and the beauty and mystery of how it reveals itself. Day after day, season after season, year after year.
I watch as this garden grows, the cycles of life, the rhythms of nature, the pulsation of love. As I sit amidst all the seeds I have planted these 41 years, I recognize that I too am a seed of love. A seed planted by others, in their garden of love. A seed that has been prayed over and supported, watered and protected… By so many. None could predict what has flowered, the tree that I have become. The markings on my bark and the bumps on my trunk, the shape of my branches, the size of my leaves, the scent of my flowers. Yet they all nurtured this seed, with love, so love could grow.
So I commit to love, as love, coming from love, and returning to love. Not knowing the shape and form that love may take, knowing so many forms and shapes love has already taken, feeding love, nurturing love, planting seeds of love.
written August 2017, after completing the final ritual of separation as husband and wife (with my former husband).
(Drawing by the fabulous Simona Galbiati)