While talking about love, I don’t want to get sappy. I really hate sappy. It seems so disingenuous. People going on and on about it…trying to pin love to their lapels like a badge of honor or wear it like a new pair of ‘look-at-me’ expensive shoes. And those speeches at weddings? Doesn’t it often seem like they are trying a bit too hard to convince the guests? These days everybody wants to declare their love publicly as if it’ll make it more real. Often it appears to be more about marketing an image of love or an event of love rather than nurturing the real thing. Remember those ‘love is’ sayings? Well, sometimes love is just shutting the hell up about it.

…but I am not cynical. Not me. I believe wholeheartedly in the incredible Force that is Love. At its purest, there is nothing greater. Unfortunately, as old Billy Idol still sings, “there’s nothin’ pure in this world.” No, this world is full of impurities like liars, thieves, murderers, money grubbers…and those are just the ‘respectable’ citizens. And the funny thing is that every one of those liars, thieves, murders and money grubbers clings to some semblance of love. The wicked possess love too because we all require it to survive. Hitler loved his dogs and that Eva whatsit. Being capable of some degree of love is not enough to make you a decent human being, and simply needing love does not get you into Heaven. There is so much more to it than that.

I once dreamt about True Love. I saw it in an image. I felt it in an image. And so, within the limitations of language, this is how I best describe what I saw and felt:

Love, in its truest form, is normally hidden beneath all the things of this world, but in the dream, all that heaviness that usually covered it was pulled back so that I could see what Love looked like. It had five characteristics.

First, Love was a light in the darkness, but more than a light. It glowed beautifully bright surrounded by the dull greys and blacks and off-blacks and off-greys of this world…and within its magnificent glow was essential nourishment. Like food to the body, air to the lungs, it would mean pain and absolute death without it.

Second, Love was porous…porous because it was soft and warm and welcoming to the weary soul.

Third, Love was metal…metal because it was unbreakable. It was fixed and unmovable. Stronger than anything ever imagined…eternal, as long as the soul held onto it.

Fourth, by its very nature it connected…unified. It turns what is separate into One.

Fifth, it was in the shape of a drop because a drop originates from a source and the Source of all Love is God.

One of the most underrated metaphysicians in history once explained Love like this: I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and I have loved them even as you have loved me. John 17:23