Friday, May 22, 2015

Heart to Heal

A wise man once compared love to a thrashing floor where the hard shell around your heart is beaten until the sheath breaks away. No matter how many layers you've been through, love finds new ways to reform you each and every day. Whether it's a new crack appearing in the tough husk you didn't think you had or the chaff separating for the first time and you're trying desperately to breathe after the shock...love will reform you with each breath if you let it. 
It's not wrong to feel threatened by the change, it's your choice to allow it, but until you've touched the pain you won't have any knowledge of the joys gained with the growth in your life when you allow it. Emotions are frightening, the thought of a heart being taken to the thrashing floor of love sounds immensely painful, but life cannot have love without feelings. And pain is one of them.
To be hurt by loving could mean a number of things. It could be a dream you must let go, a trial in your relationship, a mutual loss, a betrayal, a falling away, a falling out...it could be anything you're afraid of or that one thing you overlooked...regardless of what it is, if you love it will hurt. 
But if there is one thing we can take comfort in, it's the fact that we are only human. We don't have to carry the burden of diety and angels, we can experience life as we were born into this world: human. Without unfairly judging eachother for struggles or holding a double standard. Humanity means we all have emotions and feelings, no matter how we try and deny them and to understand the emotions and feelings of others leaves our lives perhaps in more pain but richer for it. Perhaps in more confusion but deeper loved for it. No matter your situation in life; your religion; your personal struggles; or your personal achievements; never become so logical that you forget how to feel or so bitter that you can't touch the heart of others with compassion. 

The Prophet: Kahlil Gibran
On love- 
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden. 

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. 

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. 

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart. 

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love. 

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. 

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

 

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