Love Never Fails.

Oh, who are we kidding?

Love fails all the time.

Little experiments in love are dropping like flies around us every day.

But here's the thing about love:

Despite our missteps, love never loses its energy & possibility.

So - go for it. Take a chance. Get messy. Fall down. Good gracious, get back up! Dust yourself off and try, try again.

Practice love every day in extraordinarily ordinary ways. Try to love the folks you get along with, and the folks you'd rather not be around. Love the folks who get you and the folks who make your blood boil. Practice love toward the girl in the checkout line, and the man directing you through a construction zone, and the jerk who just cut you off in traffic, and the person who interrupted your me-time, and neighbor you often see but seldom speak with.

Give it a try. It doesn't have to be fancy. It may not be returned (part of loving someone is allowing them their autonomy to not love you back). It may look like a failure. But take heart!

The practice of love is never a failure, no matter the outcome.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all. Go forth in love.

Love Always Perseveres...

“People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities. Who wouldn’t? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that’s not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of it.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Commited: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another. Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met.” ~ bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

Love Always Hopes...

“To love another is like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.” ~ Anne Sexton

“Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience - or give it a more fascinating name: Call it hope.” ~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Love Always Trusts...

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.” ~ Brene Brown

“While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down, while I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try, well how can I say I'm alive?”

 

“Oh, I'll settle down with some old story about a boy who's just like me, thought there was love in everything & everyone - you're so naive! They always reach a sorry ending, they always get it in the end. Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly and then, with a winning smile, the boy with naivety succeeds!” ~ Belle and Sebastian

“I never loved nobody fully, always one foot on the ground. And by protecting my heart truly, I got lost in the sounds I hear in my mind.”

“In the last few days, I've been learning how to not trust people and I'm glad I failed. Sometimes we depend on other people as a mirror to define us and tell us who we are, and each reflection makes me like myself a little more.” ~ Lizzie, My Blueberry Nights

 

 

“And I do not want to be a rose, I do not wish to be pale pink, but flower scarlet, flower gold, and have no thorns to distance me.”

Love Always Protects...

“We’re caught up in a culture where we have to do, where we have to run, where we have projects and more projects. Discover what it means to be human, to listen to each other, to love each other.” ~ Jean Vanier

 

Time and expectation and shoulda-coulda-woulda invades our soul.

Love lets us know, it’s ok to slow down.

Love lets us be, right where we are, in our time.

Love calls us back from the brink of anxiousness

and the depths of regret.

Love wraps an arm around our shoulders and sits with us in the present

 
Love looks us in the eyes, says I AM here, and that is enough.

Love Does Not Delight in Evil but Rejoices With the Truth...

“We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are symptoms of our illness, and the result of our failures in love. In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.

But his love is greater than all our hate, and he will not rest until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until the dark has turned to him; until all, all of us without exception, freely return his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not finished, we will know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we call.

Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus.”  ~ Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season

“Invisible light in your lover’s heart, will show the way through the fiery furnace. And what burns up is torn away, and what remains is a beautiful promise.”  ~ Jolie Holland, You Painted Yourself In

 
The Fire
by Franz Wright

Listen, I’ve light

in my eyes
and on my skin
the warmth of a star, so strange
is this
that I
can barely comprehend it:
I think
I’ll lift my face to it, and then
I lift my face,
and don’t even know how
this is done. And
everything alive
(and everything’s
alive) is turning
into something else
as at the heart
of some annihilating
or is it creating
fire
that’s burning, unseeably, always
burning at such speeds
as eyes cannot
detect, just try
to observe your own face
growing old
in the mirror, or
is it beginning
to be born?

Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs...

Remember that thing this morning, where I forgot to post yesterday and had to do it today? Can we just forget that happened and move on with this series? Sorry, y'all. Won't happen again.

Love is Not Easily Angered...

Dang it, y’all! This is why I don’t do series. Can we all just pretend it’s yesterday, and then I’ll just post today’s post later? Thanks. Not that I’m angry with myself…

Listen. Consider. Don’t presume. Pause. Deep breath. Step back. Walk away. Return. Wrestle. Question. Seek understanding. Be gracious. Forgive. Seek forgiveness. Explain. Communicate. Laugh.

“She taught me how to wage a cold war with quiet charm, but I just want to walk through my life unarmed…”

“It is difficult to bless and not to curse when one’s control of a situation is taken away. I witness daily the cursing which is the result of impotence. My threshold of anger is much lower than it used to be. Small annoyances provoke much too strong a reaction of irritation. I may not curse, but blessings do not come to my lips as often as I would like…
 
So it is with all of life. If our usual response to an annoying situation is a curse, we’re likely to meet emergencies with a curse. In the little events of daily living we have the opportunity to condition our reflexes, which are built up out of ordinary things. And we learn to bless first of all by being blessed. My reflexes of blessing have been conditioned by my parents, my husband, my children, my friends.

Blessing is an attitude toward all of life, transcending and moving beyond words. When family and friends gather around the table to break bread together, this is a blessing. When we harden our hearts against anyone, this is a cursing. Sometimes a person, or a group of people, do or say something so terrible that we can neither bless nor curse. They are anathema. We put them outside the city walls, not out of revenge, not out of hate, but because they have gone beyond anything we fragile human beings can cope with. So we say, Here, God, I’m sorry. This is more than I can handle. Please take care of it. Your ways are not our ways. You know what to do. Please.”

~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

Love is Not Self-Seeking...

“You can't navigate me. I may do mean things, and I may hurt you, and I may run away without your permission, and you may hate me forever, and I know that scares the living shit outta you 'cause you know I'm the only real thing you got.”
~ Troy Dyer, Reality Bites

 
Love is hard, because love means giving up your desire to control another person. We can choose the safety of self-preservation, or we take our chances & risk it all.

Love takes a chance on another person – on their dreams, their baggage, their beauty and their mess. Choosing takes both wisdom and whimsy – enough wisdom to give you confidence, enough whimsy to throw caution to the wind.
 

 

Love Does Not Dishonor Others…

“The rules of the track work well for life. Roller derby is life in a tiny circle. You can only go forward, even if you find yourself turned around, facing the wrong way. There's speed, unpredictability, and danger. You can't be sure what's going to happen, you don't always know when you'll stop, and it appears most people are out to get you. You will fall. You will get hurt. But you will get up again.” ~ Pamela Ribon, Going in Circles

I almost forgot about today’s post, but I’m getting it in just under the wire. You get extra videos tonight (tomorrow?) to make up for it.

Here’s the truth: Love leaves us vulnerable to being hurt, to being left, to being dishonored. 

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.” ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Life will knock us down. Love pulls us back up, if we’re brave enough to let it.

In the meantime, we own our own part.

We honor one another enough to be honest, to be faithful, and (sometimes) even to be angry.

We honor one another when we remember there’s a real person on the other side of our relationship, feelings and flaws and vulnerabilities wrapped in flesh.

We honor one another when we commit to making it work, rather than simply walking away (or worse).

We honor one another when, if necessary, we DO walk away. We honor one another when we don’t allow ourselves to be dishonored.

Namaste.

 

Love Does Not Boast, It is Not Proud...

Love never promises to be easy.

We all have to do our fair share of the work, and we all have to own up to our fair share of the mess.

Love isn't afraid to get dirt under nails, to roll up sleeves, to put hand to the plow.

Love kneels down to dirty feet and washes them clean with tears and hair, or basin and towel.

Love hurts.

Love heals.

Love owns her shit. Love shows his ass. Love forgives.

"With no regrets or grudges against the tin and timber of real life around you, let it be time to bring every memory inside like wood you place in the fireplace piece by piece, wish by wish. The old need that wasn't met, the wants misunderstood, what you absolutely knew and guessed, what you dreamed or half invented, saw and heard outright or saw and heard in words you read and adored, what was done to you and calls for revenge you let burn away. Each thing is of the same good use, and burning together, continually, the light the bundle makes belongs to you, your love and work, what you see by, how you're seen... the deeper the dreams and beliefs, the brighter and warmer you and the rooms you walk through are, and you're safe now passing through old places, not dark now, more than sufficiently kept lit by you." ~ Kaye Gibbons the life all around me by Ellen Foster

Love Does Not Envy…

…or, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

It’s easy to get around folks who inspire you & start with the “what ifs.”

What if this had happened?
What if that hadn’t happened?
What if I were more? What if I were less?
What if I had chosen this-or-that?

Fact is, we are who we are.
Our choices have been made.
Our pasts are… well, past.
Envy changes nothing.

If something catches our eye, pulls at our heart strings, sounds a siren call – we do nothing to pursue it by looking behind. We do nothing to pursue it by asking “what ifs.”

We can only move toward a better version of ourselves.
We can’t change who we’ve been.
We can’t become a clone of someone else.

So much of life, from our genetic makeup to our biographical events, is out of our control.

Love chooses to love ourselves, just as we are, and to extend that same courtesy to others. All the while, love also listens to who it is we long to become, within our own skin, and encourages us to press forward.

Love doesn’t live in wish dreams.

Love awakens us to the beauty of reality and tangible possibility.

Love awakens.

Love is patient, love is kind…

February 1^st kinda snuck up on me. I had wanted to come up with some gimmick for Valentines this year, some creative way of posting through the days leading up to the holiday (yes, I celebrate the day many loathe as if it were a full season). Yesterday I started thinking about 1 Corinthians 13, and last night I tried to scramble to get it started.

Love is patient…

I started digging for what I wanted to share. A quote. A song. An image. I had already grabbed several books of the shelves and was combing through them for the perfect pretty turn of phrase, when it hit me.

Slow down!

Love is patient…

Love will still be love tomorrow. Love doesn’t need to be whipped up & served on whim.

Love is patient, love is kind…

And it’s ok to be patient with myself, to be kind to myself, to step away from silly manufactured emergencies in which it is monumentally imperative I POST SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!

We don’t have to write down the days.

We don’t have to capture every thought in a jar so we can stare at it when we want.

We just have to live them.

To love in them.

To be in them.

To be patient enough to see the wonder and the magic and the joy in extraordinarily ordinary days, and to savor those moments.

Documentation be damned.

This morning I woke up and headed to a Centering Prayer workshop with a friend. Centering prayer is all about being present – not doing, not even listening or discerning, simply being. It’s a patience that believes you don’t have to figure everything out right now, you don’t have to be in control. It’s a kindness that believes it’s ok for you to rest, to abide, to do absolutely nothing but BE.

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

Go and do likewise.

Vday Song #14: all matters human

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

I can move oceans, when I get the notion...

Vday Song #13: cold & hot

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

Look what I'm going through - it must be love...

Vday Songs #10, 11 & 12: try, try again

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

(Dang weekend, throwing me for a loop! Y'all get yesterday's, today's & tomorrow's thrown in as a bonus - again, a common theme.)

Big, little, or short, or tall - wish I coulda kept 'em all...



I've been made blue, I've been lied to, when will I be loved...



Searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I'm dreaming of...

Vday Songs #8 & 9: fill 'er up

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

(Y'all get a twofer Thursday, since I failed to post yesterday!)

Love is the seed, & babe I need you to keep it growing stronger everyday...



Son, I'm glad that you dropped in...

Vday Song #7: window open wide

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

I should be happy, no dishes to wash now but my own...

Vday Song #6: rhinestones & sequins

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

There's certain things a man just doesn't know...

Vday Song #5: pockets full of nothing

I've traditionally celebrated Valentines here at Barefoot Bohemian, and I am not one to toy with tradition. This year I thought I would go low maintenance and post 14 classic country songs about love (not necessarily love songs, mind you).

If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal...