The only way love
can last a lifetime is
if it's unconditional. The truth is this:
Love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.
~ Stephen Kendrick
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INTERVIEWS
Patricia Raskin Joslyn Wolfe
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 Thank You
for helping us become a ConstantContact All Star for the second year
in a row! |
In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.
~ Janos Arnay
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I'm Rodelinde.
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Some people love easily, readily, joyfully; some need to learn. Literature and film are filled with stories of both. I'd like to tell you about three wonderful films and a sweet book that are all, in their different ways, about people to whom love does not come naturally.
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In Lars and the Real Girl, a young man who is not just painfully but morbidly shy falls in love with the lifesize, anatomically correct silicone sex doll he has innocently purchased via the internet. His brother and his sister-in-law as well as his small Midwest community of friends love Lars unconditionally, so they agree among themselves to accept the doll Bianca as his girlfriend. They've been paying attention to their preacher's words: "In all this world, there is only one law . . . Love one another." Lars's physician explains to his family that his delusion will end "when he doesn't need it anymore."
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Onion soup sustains. The process of making it
is somewhat like the process of learning to love.
It requires commitment, extraordinary effort, time,
and will make you cry.
~ Ronni Lundy
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Mostly Martha is the story of a fanatically dedicated chef whose work at the restaurant absorbs all of her time, energy, and emotion until she unexpectedly becomes responsible for the care of her niece, Lina. As Martha comes to understand and love this precocious and moody young girl, she begins to live for the moment, not just in it. Then she meets Mario, whom the restaurant's owner has hired to cover for Martha when her schedule falls apart. Martha sees Mario as a potential rival. But the unfazed Mario, a spontaneous, warm, sensitive Italian - in short, Martha's polar opposite - knows a thing or two about how to love and is prepared to teach her.
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Love is when two people who care for each other get confused.
- Bob Schneider
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Sometimes it's not the title character who needs to learn love. Despite her mental handicap, Carla Tate knows how to love. In fact, she says, she knows nothing else but she does know how to love. She's The Other Sister (1999). The person who really needs to learn love - in the deepest sense of understanding and accepting - is her mother, an expert in the art of denial. Usually it is the parent who teaches the child. Here, in her own quirky way, Carla teaches her mother how simple love can be. This is one of those movies that leave you torn between laughter and tears of bliss at the over-the-top ending.
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The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -
loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
~ Victor Hugo
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In The Bachelor's Cat: A Love Story, by L.F. Hoffman, The Bachelor has an on-again, off-again high-voltage relationship with his slender, athletic Girlfriend, who is forever on the lookout for something better. During one of their off times, The Bachelor finds and adopts a tiny kitten. They become fast friends and playmates. Increasingly, he asks himself, "Why can't a woman be more like a cat?" And then he meets The Woman. She's chubby, not at all his type. But she's complicated and interesting and funny. Being with her is a bit like being with the cat. We never learn the names of The Bachelor, The Girlfriend, or The Woman. (The cat is called Frankie. Clearly, she is the protagonist.)
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