At 6:30 this morning, it was almost daylight here in the Berkshires, and I felt a lifting in my heart. But even though the days are growing longer, spring still seems only like a distant promise. This is the time, when the world seems relentlessly cold and the weather merciless, that we are most in need of whatever it takes to make us warm. The wonderful thing is that even the mere promise of warmth can warm us. Getting actual physical warmth from a woodstove, a fleecy jacket, a loved one's arms is of course the straightforward, the ideal way of fighting off the chill.
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It is very important that we have the capacity to love
many different things or people at the same time.
Our love should radiate like the sun, warming everything it touches.
~ Peggy Toney Horton
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But how can we achieve the warm feeling that comes from the knowledge that we love and are loved at times when we happen not to be in love? (Don't think I am discounting the love of family and friends, but romantic love is a professional preoccupation of mine, so that's where my emphasis always ends up.) This is where hope comes in: Emily Dickinson's "thing with feathers" can be made into a kind of down comforter for the soul. We can warm our inner being by wrapping ourselves in the knowledge that we are actively seeking that which will eventually warm us in reality.
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Go spend time with the aspen trees.
They'll tell you how it works.
They'll tell you to look to your roots for energy.
They'll tell you there's warmth below the surface.
~ Kaya McLaren
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I am happy for all of you who are already basking in all the love you need. For the rest, I wish that you will find within yourself first the dream, the hope, and the promise, and then the actuality of the warmth of love.
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