what i know about love

hard on the heels of valentine's day, my puppy sam is sick. she's not really a puppy any more of course, and we don't really know how old she is. sam found her way to me by way of magic and abuse, when she was found, abandoned and alone, running around a friend's backyard during one particularly polar january. we brought her home on valentine's day, 2004.

i had to take her to the vet this morning for the second time in two days with vomiting and bloody diarrhea, caused by unknown origin. there is a very real possibility that sam may not come home. mommy loves you, sam, i whispered when i said goodbye. and i thanked her, for coming into my life at a time when i was ready to understand the projection of a Shadow when i saw one.

there was something in the loving of sam that enabled a healing in myself. there is something in loving sam that taught me a great deal about the nature of love, itself.

i believe that love is another word for the energy that creates and sustains all that is. i dont think we choose to love, we are created out of and by that love to sustain itself. love is more than our nature, it is what we are.

i think we sometimes fail to differentiate between human expression of that energy, and the energy itself. the human expression of that energy - whether it is romantic, filial, or friendship - always appears to us to be flawed, if only because it always ends in loss.

even the most perfect of relationships head to a bad end, because someone has to die first. the human experience of love is always shadowed by the human experience, itself. it is also shadowed by other aspects of the human experience - the aspects that create the wounds that damage us all.

but love - as the apostle paul suggested in one of his few actual moments of clarity and grace - never ends, any more than energy ends. love doesn't end, it only transforms.

sam has won a place for a homeless puppy forever in my heart.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.