“Love is something when you give it away, you end up having more.” Malvina Reynolds.
My 10 year-old loves the recent movie ‘The Mitchells vs. the Machines’ and convinced me to watch it with her one evening. It’s about a quirky family who saves the world from an AI apocalypse and at one point in the film, the lead AI character, PAL, asks the protagonists why humans are worth keeping on earth. The inventor of PAL shouts, “The Power of Love!” then Katie, the brave daughter, waxes on and on about human love and devotion to family, almost bringing the viewer to tears. But it only puts the AI to sleep.
For some reason this scene took me back to 2000, when I first saw ‘love’ being branded: printed in bright pink capital letters on the shopping bags exiting Macy’s department store. I found it shocking and offensive- how could anyone in a capitalist business claim love was a part of their equation? Profit and greed, yes, but love? No way. A labor of love or made with love could be a tagline for small cottage industries perhaps, but when quantity replaces quality, with the driving force behind it obviously profit, love goes out the window. And it is not the kind of love I want to embrace or advertise.
What does love mean in 2024, and are we becoming collectively distanced from its power due to how carelessly love is slung all over the place from corporate lingo to endlessly ‘hearting’ posts on social media or text messages? 21st century corporations, organizations and politicians have used ‘love’ ubiquitously, branding it into any logo or slogan they can get away with. Not by any means do I think I can answer the question of love’s meaning or power in a Substack post or even a book or a whole life of research at that, but I do think regular reflections upon our own definition can help energize our living relationship with Love. Expand our capacity for true love. Strengthen our ability to share and receive love. And guide us in how to best embody love while alive on this earth.
“We are born of love- love is our mother. “ Rumi
As a child, I learned about 3 types of love:
~Agape- the sacrificial, selfless love we may have for our family, nature, community, god and also used to describe god’s love for us.
~Philos, philia or friendship- fondness, bonding, affection and a deep connection that is not sexual.
~Eros or romantic love- passion, sexual desire and physical attraction
We all know these can overlap and that each one evokes a unique feeling of Love. But meditating on and practicing agape love has been the driving force of my later years, and I return to it as the most stable love I have known.
Surely we can all agree the world needs more of this agape love and devotion, and since next week is the hallmark holiday of love, I asked readers of Earth Devotions to share with me how you would describe love, and I also asked members of my hometown community. I thank every single one of you who took the time to reply and share what love means to you. I deeply appreciate it. And this morning, I asked Nadia, my ten-year old, and she answered, “Love is something that you can’t explain but you just know what it is, mom.” Yes, without definition, we know.
But still…
…it’s inspiring to take it all in, again and again.
So, below, I have compiled these descriptions for you to take into your winged heart and fly on into the bosom of Love if you wish.
What is Love?
~Love is opening your heart to someone or something.
~Love is seeing the best in another.
~Love is what happens when your mind gets out of the way.
~Love is giving of yourself to the benefit of another. Love is also receiving that gift from another.
~Love is the peak of the tallest mountain. It lifts us up to the clouds while whispering "don't look down."
~Love is giving without expectation of anything in return.
~Love is power that heals separation, brings comfort and leads to the knowing that ALL is held securely and sacredly, in the Divine Mind of Creation.
~Love summed up in 3 words. Respect, Honesty, Loyalty. R.H.L. Real High Love
~Love is that of long-lasting companionship, honesty, support, compassion.
~Love is knowing there are many kinds of love in this world and that I can exchange love with everything and everyone in this life!
~Love is moonlight licking the arched back of the porpoise and a witness on the ever moving shoreline.
~Love is how I feel about Lucille and Beth and Morgaine, and others too, but those three stand out.
~Everything in the known / unknown universe is impermanent, except Love.
~Love is the single & only permanent reality - transcending all limits.
~Love is the warm buzzing that tells a seed when it's warm and wet enough to begin growing. The umbilicus that pulses between this ethereal world of finite form and the eternal ocean of unfathomable consciousness; that which connects them as they feed each other's other-ness, longing, reaching; impossible gratitude.
~Love is showing up, even when you don't want to/are tired/would rather just rest.
~Love is the Primal Yearning that animates all existence.
~Love is the animating force of all things.
~Love is the pull behind the string bringing us from this moment to the next.
~Love is accepting one another exactly as we are.
~Love is consciousness.
~Love is kindness when we want to act otherwise. Love is also holding boundaries when we'd rather shy away and remain small.
~Love is knowing when to let you go.
~Love is when I feel I can love myself and love you too.
~Love is expansive, not a box that grows full.
~Love is finding that essential part of the other and allowing everything else to change and evolve in any direction it needs to.
~Love is the willingness to trust in the darkness and the uncertainty.
~Love is undivided presence.
~Love is eroding the separation between you and them.
~Love is paying attention.
~Love is giving attention to good or so called bad. Love is caring and doing something for it.
~Love is when helping in secret.
~Love is what makes the flowers grow, the earth spin, the wind blow, the stars shine and creation keep creating.
~Love is the ocean that encapsulates the Monad causing it to yearn for and dream up the Other and then Love manifests as their relationality.
~Love is dreaming about a world where we respect, care for, listen to, honor, heartfully gift, and support everyone, human and more than human, as kin.
~Love is feeling safe enough to be able to express what you feel and need.
~Love is clear boundaries.
~Love is ecstasy and all the best of reality.
~Love is service, sacrifice while retaining adoration.
~Love is that Undefended space of total surrender, unconditional acceptance.
~Love is acceptance and celebration.
~Love is gazing at my daughter, as she laughs in absolute delight .
~Love is expressed perfectly through laughter.
May Love day be everyday,
Mary Morgaine Squire
2/9/24
~Love Letters to our Plant Allies~
Motherwort
Leonurus cardiaca, siberius
Lamiaceae
Dear Motherwort,
Being introduced to you with the name of Motherwort certainly guided my perception of you from the start. Knowing that wort just means plant- you are the Mother Plant I asked? The Plant for Mothers? Yes, both, and so much more. Each day I lean into you, I learn something new. When friends are having stagnant, painful periods with much cramping, I give them a tincture of you. When I am feeling emotionally unstable, I also take your tincture. I dry your aerial parts for tea and the bitterness works for me. Grounding, so grounding.
You are very nourishing, Motherwort. And how easy you are to grow, too! Can these two things be related? You came all the way from Asia and Southeastern Europe, where so many of our herbal allies were born, and have made yourself quite at home here in North America! Your leaves start out fat and full and bushy, then your stems begin to lengthen and your leaves narrow, completely changing shape as the season progresses. I love how you grow in both shade and sun, and will flower in both places. You don’t stand as erect in the shade, but your flowers are a deeper pink and still prolific. I wish I had of planted you out of the afternoon light and heat- you don’t seem to like that so much.
I know you. You will, if given space, make a forest of yourself. Your cousin from Siberia even more so! June is the time I harvest your little forest. Thank you for being so abundant. Your petite pink flowers are as soft as down. I eat them one by one, going about it slowly so as not to get pricked by your seed cases while receiving this tender offering. I see how your hairy square stems can have 2 red sides and 2 green sides, indicating the direction they are facing. Your seed vessel grasps your stem on either side, reminding me of lungs, or ovaries, or testicles.
Lionhearted one and Leonurus cardiaca are two of your other names, attesting to the strength and courage you bestow unto the heart. I know better than to think you are just a woman’s herb, even though you have immense powers in working with the female reproductive system. We humans all have hearts that can break and do, and you help us digest the bitterness of heartbreak, keeping the channels open so we do not shut down. You teach us how to love well and strong and long.
Motherwort, you guide our pain to travel from our heart to our root—our pelvic floor—and then back into our heart center. This journey is what can transform grief into wisdom. What big medicine you carry, connecting our hearts to our reproductive organs, and in so doing balance our base desires with our best selves. In combination with Rose, Hawthorne and Vanilla, you are the love elixir for our heart’s opening and greatest health. I have heard it said that you can open our hearts to secret loves…
When I process your aerial parts, it can hurt! You are both soft and spiky and bits of your prickles come off on my fingers like briars. Ouch! I need to be very mindful in working with you. You support the softening of my rigid edges. The bittersweetness of life is mirrored in your form and taste. Hard to deal with at times, just like the bitter truth.
You’ve asked us through your qualities to not take you much during pregnancy, or if we have fibroids or endometriosis, or tend to have a heavy menstrual flow. You really help us get it all out- the blood, sweat and tears. Maybe that is why you also help us sleep well.
Motherwort, you keep us calm and steady while riding the waves of life. Even though you are profoundly moving energy, you still offer emotional stability. By giving our nerves the support they need to be in integrity, you simultaneously help us hear the story of our own hearts. Thank you, teacher.
Love,
Mary Plantwalker
Beautiful post! Putting love at the center is enriching in so many ways. Alice Duer Miller said, "Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer." She also wrote:
The English love their country with a love
Steady, and simple, wordless, dignified;
I think it sets their patriotism above
All others. We Americans have pride--
We glory in our country's short romance.
We boast of it and love it. Frenchmen, when
The ultimate menace comes, will die for France
Logically as they lived. But Englishmen
Will serve day after day, obey the law,
And do dull tasks that keep a nation strong.
Once I remember in London how I saw
Pale shabby people standing in a long
Line in the twilight and the misty rain
To pay their tax. I then saw England plain.