DEAR CREATION SPIRIT FRIENDS,

(First things first: in order to view the newsletter in its intended form, click at the top left of the newsletter, either where you find "having trouble viewing this email?" and/or where you will  find display images below.) 

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!  With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I want to leave you with two reminders.  One is about an amazing book that will awaken your heart, and the other is a story that is sure to bring you closer to making Love all day, every day-- metaphorically speaking , of course.

The book, ON MAKING LOVE, speaks in the language of poetic prose, depicting some of the many ways of seeing and living Life with spiritual awareness and an open heart.  You can still obtain copies in time to celebrate the loving way with those around you, beginning with Valentine's Day. 

Making Love is...

...never only  

wishing  

you could say

I make love all day  

and just being Love

every day. 

Simply CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON MAKING LOVE and then click on "See more books by Jim" to obtain copies for your loved ones.

Secondly, the following is an excerpt taken from a longer  piece on Love-making, ON PIGEONS AND OTHER MATTERS.  I know this sounds strange, but then you've come to expect that from me, haven't you?  

With this, I leave you with heartfelt wishes for a most Loving life--year after year, day by day, moment by moment.  May every day be a one of lavishing authentic Love on one another!

Happy Now!

Jim Young

On Pigeons and Other Important Matters...  

(excerpt from an essay)

            ...As I turn the pages to find my bookmark, I hear an inner prompting to look over my left shoulder to the stone ledge that separates the two-story, Spanish-tiled roof line from the furniture-filled rooms in the antique store below.  Just as I turn to look, two pigeons land near one another. They strut along the ledge, first this way then that, not particularly paying attention to one another.  I watch for a moment and notice that one is approaching the other. Intuitively, I know I'm about to witness "the act."  Seemingly without notice, one bird leaps onto the backside of the other, does his thing in a flash and leaps back off,  landing again on the ledge.  In a few seconds, he repeats "the act" in precisely the same fashion.  I am tickled beyond description by this version of modern man and woman in a "long after the honeymoon" clinch. Just like that. Land. Do it. It's done and over with. 

            After privately thanking these lovely creatures for allowing me to participate vicariously in their clinches, I return to my book and glass of wine, now dripping from the warm, humid day, casting dew on the ice-cold goblet.  Neither my reading nor wine sipping lasts very long, however.  Suddenly, just as before, I'm led to what is yet another simple, yet profound,  lesson for me.  For nearly 45 minutes these two beautiful creatures bill and coo, strut around one another, brush feather along feather, poke here and there, gently nudging under the wings, around the neck, beak to beak.  It is the most extraordinary display of "after play" I have ever witnessed, despite my own preference for similar means of savoring love's fulfilling patterns. 

            I notice that a few other diners have entered, and they seem to glow in the wake of the beauty I've witnessed.  As I prepare to leave, a man and woman at the next table catch my eye and we exchange a brief greeting.  I am walking on a cloud and want to share this story with anyone who would listen. Instead, I decide to savor the occasion privately, filling my soul to overflowing with the sweetness of joy. 

            The purpose of all this?  Well, it could be the purpose is to illustrate that making love isn't simply fornication at all, although making love certainly could include that. Making love on an everyday basis is really about what happens between, as well as in, one "episode" and another.  

             On another level, this marvelous display depicts  what loving really is about, while at the same time putting the sex act into a wholesome perspective.  With pigeons, sex is but a natural act between lovers, an act not unlike pecking at food, flying from one ledge to another, like dropping a load of feces on someone's Easter bonnet in the bowels of the Jardin below.  But it's also a necessary act, one that comes with simply being an animal, a spiritual being.  It is not something to withhold or talk down about.  It simply is--like life itself.  

             And when we make nothing more of it than that, it flourishes as a normal--even celebrated--part of living.  When embraced as an authentic gift of love, and created in the true sense of collaboration--giving fully and fully receiving--two people give all they have to one another, letting all expectations and restraints flee out of the relational window. Indeed, in the larger sense, making love becomes a sacred act, an act that fulfills on the deepest level.  Under these conditions, even the most simple form of love making transforms into Eros, God's ultimate example of Oneness between two lovers. 

            In this context, the sex act itself becomes simply one more sacred demonstration of being a lover--just like lovingly making dinner for another, or picking up the other's laundry at the dry cleaners, hugging at the ankles and knees at bedtime, or catching one another's loving glance when passing the raspberry jam over brunch in front of a glowing fire on a frosty weekend morning.  It is Eros in the human heart that transforms loving into Loving--the sacred act of making or creating Love, moment by moment, day after day.

            The billing and cooing?  The billing and cooing is the story of stroking one another throughout Life's moments, of caring enough about another to invest one's unbridled Love with them.  It's lavishing Love on another for their benefit. It's important to be lavished upon.  At the very least, it's important to lavish Love on another because it says one is worthy of such treatment.  But such treatment also rewards--in fact, greatly nourishes--the giver, as well.  For when we are allowed, privileged--whatever--to extend Love in such dimensions, we ourselves are fulfilled in a most profound manner. As we extend Love into the Universe, and all are uplifted by it.  As the images of God we are, in times of such lavishness we become God in our own image and likeness. 

            This is what it means to be a Lover, a Lover of the first order--making Love all day long.  It's no wonder God wanted this job!  But God is not selfish that way.  God made us in Its image so we, too, could experience Eros in its deepest meaning.  So we, too, could lavish and be lavished upon.  So we could, at last, be aware of and demonstrate what we really are.  When aware, we, and thus our lives, become Eros demonstrated.  If only we'd get out of our own way, and stop taking ourselves so seriously.  And forget most everything our parents and friends taught us about making Love.