Love

I was told once that I talk about love too much. I must be confounded by it. I must not know very much about it to be always including it in my conversation. But that's essentially what I do for a living, I excused myself. "It's not a job, but it's the key to doing my job."

I suspected other jobs at that point and wondered if people who understand gardening never talk about it. If professors who know about history or psychology never talk about their subject. Are artists mum about art, musicians recalcitrant about music, poets ready to hide their words, and are news broadcasters more eager to sit silently as the cameras do a red light dance?

I looked back. I was one of those pathetic children with all the strikes. You know the kind. The little girl with the boy's haircut and the mud on her face and the sprinkling of bruises and scrapes. My dress was always dark brown with one gigantic hole that was easily hidden in the great gaping of two sizes too big, but that was OK because shoes were always two sizes too small and it kind of balanced the ragamuffinesque picture.

David Niven lived up the street from me right near Mary Martin. I played with Sterling Hayden's kids; Gretchen wore pink and yellow and ribbons in her long blond hair. Her father loved her and her brothers. He had a huge booming voice and once demanded that I teach his new wife how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Perhaps I looked smart.

I remember going next door to Mrs. Kyle's house who taught me how to garden. She showed me how to divide plants, how to care for bits and pieces of living things. I saw instantly how life is precious, how the smallest green thing begs to live, begs for life - a little water, a little care, some time, some light and suddenly the pot is overflowing with abundance and vigor. Because of simple acts of kindness, the plant often rewards the giver with a gift of flowers. I learned a lot from Mrs. Kyle. I watched her love her life and how she missed her husband who was a merchant marine. She used to knit her own clothes. I remember a brown suit she made and a houseful of treasures.

What I've found is that life is like Mrs. Kyle's garden. It's filled with bits and pieces that just need to be loved - a little warmth, some light, some care and presto bingo there's an abundance of life returned. Love a child and you have a friend for life. Love a peer and you have companionship. Love strangers and the world becomes full. I suppose that's an unsophisticated approach to life that's terribly flawed. We are all terribly flawed, but it doesn't keep us from loving.

Perhaps I don't know a lot about love, but I know that love seems to be a free exchange of the will. And those who know how to love, love with abundance and joy and vigor and life. Lovers give everything they have without fear that one day it will all be given away and there won't be any left - that's why they're called lovers.

I know that when you love something lesser than yourself, like the cat my daughter and I found covered in mange, coughing with pneumonia, toothless, and sad, and you care for it just a little with just a little love, and the actions of love - interest and care - it thrives. When the cat found us, we called him Terminal and now we have to give this handsome cat with the sleek coat and the appetite of kings a better name. Perhaps we will call him Paul.

One of Scripture's little pockets offers the best image of love I can think of. Talents given by the Master to become an abundance with a little care. Some will reap the flowers, and others will hide theirs in the back yard under a rock in an attempt to keep it all.

Love is a beautiful expression of hope. It's meant to be shouted out loud from the rooftops.