| "...years later, the couple related the story of their fortuitous meeting and how they eventually fell in love." |
I read a wonderful story by John Seabrook about how his parents met around the swirl of the 1956 wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Ranier of Monaco.1 His father, a handsome Philadelphia bachelor who was a friend of the Kelly family, and his mother, a women’s news reporter covering “the wedding of the century,” met abroad ship while sailing to Monaco on the SS Constitution along with other wedding guests, the press, as well as the bridal party. It was not until years later that the couple related the story of their fortuitous meeting and how they eventually fell in love.
The story goes that on the last night of the transatlantic crossing, the smitten bachelor gave an eloquent after-dinner toast to the group; a group that included the career-woman reporter who had been denying her attraction to him. His toast was a bold declaration:
I think we lucky few who were privileged to be on board this ship will mark these eight days as a turning point in our own lives and remember this crossing as a passage into a country that we had heard tell of but didn’t know for certain existed, until now—the country of true love.2
He declared himself and her resistance melted.
Is this what really happens when you land in the place of true love? Does it mean that you have let go of looking for a concept (what you "think" love is about) and open yourself to something heretofore unimagined? Perhaps just the nature of a declaration is to reveal anew what is in your heart.
| "The bachelor’s toast declared finding true love like arriving in a mysterious country..." |
The bachelor’s toast declared finding true love like arriving in a mysterious country. My friends, Robert Petteway and Cynthia Zaal, wrote a poem that declares love is a place, a "residence" for our truest heart’s desire, different from what the mind thinks it might want.
The poem, titled Looking for Love, speaks about looking for love in the place of thought, but losing themselves; they looked in the place of sensations, but knew there was more; they looked in the place of dreams, but even that was not deep enough. Then they declared: The last place we looked was deep inside ourselves: we looked where we were afraid to go. Crossing an ocean of knowing, pretending, and defending, we found the shores of not-knowing – and our hearts opened.3
| "Love is an address to call home where it is safe to reveal your most tender, loving self." |
I like the feel of love is a place. Love is an address to call home where it is safe to reveal your most tender, loving self—and invite people in! To be able to look beyond "what you think you know," allowing your heart to speak, indeed supports crossing through thresholds of feelings and thoughts until you declare yourself home.
Is that why love feels like heaven? It's the place we come from, we're at home there. Love, like heaven, is not a place to go to later, but a place to live in each moment, enjoying abundance and happiness, like the divine heritage it is.
Whatever "ocean you are crossing," like the bachelor and reporter sailing to Monaco, as you pay attention to the subtleties of the journey, listening to the still spaces of your heart, it's easier to feel your true desire. Then your destination just might be a bit of heaven right here 'n now....an open heart full of love....ready to share with another.
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