Learning How to Love

My Parents were the first to teach me how to Love. They did an incredible job, something for which I'm forever grateful.

My father taught me how to love through service, through work and career and providing for a family, through physical affection, through attentiveness and care. My Father showed me Love with his words (like literally telling me he loved me). My Father taught me how to Love through Ritual and Spirit-Keeping. He taught me how to Love by carrying burdens. And he taught me how to love with space and trust and permission to make my own mistakes knowing he'd always be there for me when I needed.

And my dad taught me how to love a woman. How to treat with her respect, and dignity, and reverence. How to Honor her and her unfathomable depths of strength and devotion. He taught me to hug and kiss and hold the woman I love, and to rub her feet from time to time too. My father was and is a Loving man. He showed me what it is to Love someone as a Sovereign.

He also taught me about anger and gave me plenty of material to work through with my therapists over the years, but that was some of the best Gold a child could ask for (though at the time, sifting through heaps of rock, it didn't always feel that way). I just had to work for it a little. And I know that my dad had to do plenty of work to mine for Gold from his father too, he just was sure to leave some for me, knowing how valuable the mining process is.

My mother taught me how to Love too. She taught me how to Love with hugs, and snuggles and cuddles. She taught me how to Love with food and ice cream and clean laundry. She taught me how to love with laughter and care and fun. She taught me how to Love by being Strong in a way that is Soft. She taught me how to Love by knowing her limits and taking care of herself. She also taught me how to Love by giving me space... but maybe not quite as much as my dad :-)

My mother showed me how a man can be Loved by a woman. How she can trust him and challenge him. How she can honor his nobility and tend to his shortcomings. How she can balance his fire with her water. She showed me how a man deserves to be Loved through his pain and anguish. She showed me what is to Love someone as a Sovereign.

She also gave me material for therapy, in the way every parent does.

My parents showed me how to fight and how to make up. How to raise three wild and rambunctious boys have them all turn out okay. They taught me how to follow one's heart. And how to find meaning and purpose. And how to be in connection with Spirit and with Nature, in their own way. And they gave me the freedom and encouragement to find my ways.

I was and am extremely lucky.

What's crazy, is that I'm still learning how to Love even more. With my rare foundation of a childhood webbed with Love, I still have so much to learn. And the beauty of it, is that it's never too late to learn more, and there's always more and deeper and broader.

So, here's my invitation...

Take a moment or 5 (or better yet 20 moments), and reflect on and catalog all of the people who taught you about Love and what they taught you. Grandparents, Parents, Teachers, Friends, Lovers, Birds, The Sun, Dogs, Cats, Tomatoes.... Take a moment to re-member all the Love that's been in your life.

If grief flickers in as you recognize misses or a lack, that's okay, acknowledge it and come back to this practice of remembering where the Love came to you from. We can tend to the grief another day.

Feel the goodness of that in your Heart and in every thread of your being.

This is a good place to start. And if we're going to get where we're going in the Long Run... we have to start somewhere.

With Love,

Noah