When Love is Love

We are taught that animals fulfill the measure of their creation and have joy therein. This is especially true of Fifille our Shih Tzu dog. She was born 5 years ago on April 11, 2000, but soon will be put to sleep after battling cancer for the last 1 1/2 years. Fifille is French for little girl. She came to our home from St. George, Utah with her brother Garcon. From the very first time we saw her, we fell in love with her and her brother. She has certainly shared the joy of her creation with us. While sad that she will no longer be with us, we have been blessed to have her in our lives for five years. And before it gets unbearable for her, we will have to put her to sleep. It is doubly difficult since we are in France and can't say a proper goodbye to her, but she has been in good hands with Barbara Hall who has been staying at our house. Fifille could not have received better care and love then from Barbara. But it is so hard not to say goodbye in person, to hold her and love her...

We live very structured lives and almost everything around us is structured, such as our workplace, our schools, our churches, even our homes. We play many roles within these structures. We are employees, employers, students, parishioners, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and many more. As a result of this structure and our varied roles, we are losing the ability to connect to each other as persons. While we are close (as in near) to those around us within these structures, we do not often connect with them as other persons. This is especially true to those closest to us:  our wives, husbands, siblings and children. Have you ever said or thought 'I don't feel close to you?' And yet it is impossible to not be close to those you share a house with, a bathroom or a bed. So the issue is not being close. The issue is a lack of intimacy, or the ability to connect as people. When we are intimate we experience others as people. We feel connec...

Definitions of love are easy to come by, and they are many and diverse.  What we experience as love sometimes forms our definitions of love. What you experience as love and what another experiences as love can be radically different. And there are many things that love is not, which masquerade as love, and which we call love or identify as part of loving. We will explore many of those in this blog. But let's start with a wonderful definition of love from The Art of Intimacy  by Thomas Patrick Malone, and Patrick Thomas Malone. "The experience of loving is unilateral. It asks no response, nor does it demand the other to be deserving. Any and every human being deserves love. It is not earned; one deserves it. So every human being offers us the opportunity of loving them. The loving rewards, not the being loved. Being made in the image of God, each of us deserves love. Our loving is our striving toward godliness. It is our privilege, not our duty. Love has no rewards beyond...