true love

There is little in life that can teach you what love is. There are definitions and philosophies and feelings, but there is nothing really that is the case-study and true experience of what love is -- until someone is suddenly in a real situation where his life is hanging by a thread and there is nothing you can do. No hand of salvation you can offer, no amount of money, no certain number of hugs or "I love yous" can reach far enough. Only then the real meaning of love sets into your soul and you have no control over its growth, like a strangling vine that wraps slowly, continually around you. You don't realize it's grip until in one instant, just one moment, one breath, one thought, everything revolves around the vine. And even though it might strangle you to death, the only thing you think about is the survival and growth and health of that precious bit of green. As your breathing gets shorter and it hurts even more, you see a bloom, a flower or even a ripe fruit growing on the vine -- Hope.

It's funny how we think of love. Love is not a feeling or an experience, love is not who we're with, love isn't even (as so often described) a mother's touch. Love is simple, love is what God created us to be. Think about it, God, in His infinite wisdom decided that he wanted to create a you and a me so that He could love us. Our essence, the thought, the idea of "us" is love - is God.

So why are there athiests in the world? Will they ever discover love beyond the feeling or experience, the already-thought-of philosophies and Hallmark-card tear-jerkers? Or will they wander aimlessly and thoughtlessly believing that these really are love? Never knowing... never realizing that the molecules that make up "them" are there because of Love, their very existence, their ability to feel, experience and even throw their life away isn't because some cosmic accident crashed into nothing... It's all due to the Ultimate Love. It might be a good idea to make that the goal instead of just taking the expected cultural steps: boy-meets-girl, marriage, family, brothers and sisters are created, an inexplicable bond is formed, death inevitably follows, and subsequentially pain and tears. Is that the real thing? Or is there something deeper? There exists Love that understands times-ten what it is to feel the strangulation and helplessness, that knows the tears and pain all too well, that simply wants the "I love yous" to reach beyond skin-deep and penetrate --like a double-edged sword-- the heart and cut the soul away from the spirit so that the depth of this Love can reach to places we don't even know how to dream about.

Where to go from here

When you come from a place that challenges you spiritually, physicially and (only occasionally) mentally, what are you supposed to do when you come out of it to a place of T.v. land, fast food and real meat? It boils down to a condition more serious than your typical "reverse-culture shock." First, I have to find a way to get my hair to stop falling out (lack of protein for 5 months does that to you), then I have to figure out what it means to make money (I think it's called a JORB), and even still after working all that out, there's the issue of food in excess (I'm not getting fat I'm just fluffing out).

Every time I come home I realize there are fewer and fewer things that interest me the same way they did when I was here last. In a way it feels like going to a new place and starting over from scratch, even though the people here seem to know my name and where I live. You would think it would take a week or two and things would feel natural again... the truth is nothing ever really feels natural unless I am on a plane, in a strange city, or at the top of a mountain with a backpack of the bare necessities.

There is a new curiosity to know what lies beyond even the big chunk of the world I've already seen. Travelling doesn't seem to quench the curiosity, so my solution is to explore another avenue of philosophy, self-discovery, and expression: