Valentines2005

What's Your Favorite Valentine Tradition?

Thanks to friends and family for making the Valentine's Day party at Nashoba Valley so much fun.  As you can see from the photo the arts and crafts table was exploding with creativity and supplies. How did you celebrate Valentines' Day?  The results of a poll conducted by BetterLifeMedia.com are shown below, and their "Day after Valentine's Day" email has lots of links and even a quiz on building better relationships.

What's Your Favorite Valentine Tradition?  Poll Results:

• 17.4% - Candlelight dinner with roses and champagne


• 12.3% - A fabulous vacation just for two


• 7.4% - Giving a gift that takes time vs. money


• 62.9% - Sharing quality time with people I love

Two sides of the same coin

"...love and anger are two sides of the same coin...

They are not two separate entities, one good, the other evil. 
They are, in fact, the very same life force expressed in two different guises.

When we feel joyful, it is because our life energy is allowed to flourish.
When we become angry, it is because our life energy has been thwarted.

We become angry when the promise of life is denied." 

Harville Hendrix, PhD.
Getting the Love You Want

Must say that I love this book even if I have not really studied it in nearly a decade.  Got a favorite book on Love?  Please share your recommendations in the comments section below.  There were 50 to 100 books on love, relationships, marriage and the family in a bin at the party last night.  Guests were invited to flip through them looking for quotes on love, or real world insights into the mysteries of human, and often too human as the quote above suggests, love.   One Hendrix school of marriage counseling team calls anger a GIFT and their "soul healing love" exercises help identify the emotions underneath the feeling of anger.

(Can you tell that's the same toddler in the photo below?   Our client Martin wrote, that's "my daughter Kira at the Denver Zoo this fall.  As you can see [love at first sight below] turned into an old couple quickly...)

Love @ 1st Sight!

Serious quote, surrealistic -- but REAL -- photo!  Martin Voelker, a Real Estate Cafe client who's "for sale by owner" marketing campaign was so good that one well-known traditional listing agency held a staff meeting to review his work, sent in this photo of his daughter.  Torn between calling the photo "Love at 1st sight" or "Risking diminution," I almost wore this quote to the party last night and wanted very much to discuss it with friends:

"In order for man to be truly himself, man needs to love another as himself.  In order to realize himself, man has to risk the diminution and even the total loss of all his reality, in favor of another, for if any man would save his life he must lose it.  We are never fully ourselves until we realize that those we truly love become our "other selves."  Seeing this, we are able to grasp that God also loves us as he loves Himself.  Without this awareness, there can be no perfect communion."

Thomas Merton, _The New Man_.

Spiritual Friendships & Practicing Love

Here's the Valentine's Day quote I worn to the tubing party last night.  Actually, it was more of an arts and crafts "Love Fest" which was fine for me.  Just wish we had taken some more photos of the REMARKABLE ARTWORK!

"It happens sometimes that a sweet and joyful love is awakened in the heart and swells like a great wave through the soul by itself without any effort at all on our part.  One is so powerfully moved by love, so passionately drawn up into love, so strongly taken by love, so tenderly embraced and utterly mastered by love that she surrenders herself entirely to its power.  In this embrace the soul experiences directly the radiance of the Divine, a wonderful bliss, pure freedom, ecstatic sweetness, complete overpowering by love, a waterfall of ineffable delight. She feels that all her senses are sacred and she is so totally engulfed by love and so deeply immersed in love that she is one with love, and will never cease to be love.  For the beauty of love has clothed her, the power of love has submerged her, the holiness of love has consumed her, the greatness of love has so sublimely drawn her into herself that she will always love and do nothing but acts of love."

Beatrice of Nazarath, c. 1200 - 1268
Beatrice was a Cistercian nun, school in the tradition of Spiritual Friendship.  You can learn more about her on a remarkable web site called, Gratefulness.org.  It's worth visiting regularly as is it's sister web site, SpiritualityHealth.com.  Their editorial content has won awards for three straight years, and their essay on Practicing Love on Valentine's Day lives up to that action / thought provoking tradition.

Love in the Balance

A friend who wishes to remain anonymous emailed this quote and reflection last night:

My favorite quote - from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where YOU SHALL LAUGH, BUT NOT ALL OF OUR LAUGHTER, AND WEEP, BUT NOT ALL OF OUR TEARS.

My initial reflection upon why love is so compelling is because, to me, love is all that matters in this world. Love is God and God is love.  We are love.  Love is us.  Without love there is nothing.  Without love we are nothing.

AND ... BALANCE... for everything in life there is balance... thus... good/evil... dark/light...

The reason why good will always win over evil is because of love.  If evil were to ever win or take over then we wouldn't exist....that is how you know...because we are here....as long as we are here there is love......all things come from love and need love to survive...without love nothing survives. 

Here is my pyramid: my survival pyramid --
(1) Love (2) Oxygen (3) Water (4) Food

Your thoughts are welcome...(or search The Prophet for your own quote on love and friendship.)

Favorite Quote on Love

I've worn this quote to recent Valentine's Day parties, and was delighted when one former colleague included St. Bernard of Clairvaux words in her wedding:

"Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flow back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him."

You can post your favorite quote on love, or respond to any of the other conversation starters anywhere on this Valentine's Day Blog by clicking on "comments" link below each entry.  If you're in town and attending the party, we'll have art supplies so you can make your Valentine there.

Most Memorable Kiss

Remember your first kiss, or in my case your first attempted kiss? 

I was so nervous about kissing my very first date, that I asked a number of friends for advice about how to play it cool.  Following their advice, I walked up to her door at the end of an enjoyable evening, and extended my arm to lean against the door like I was some kind of James Dean character.  Darned if it didn't ring the door bell by mistake, and moments later her father appeared.  The door opened and the date ended before I could kiss my date good night. 

As fate would have it, I unexpectedly ran into that girl (now a beautiful woman) at my 30th high school reunion in October of 2003; and retold the story as I had many, many times to the great amusement of friends.  To my surprise, she did not even realize that I was trying to kiss here that night, and all the embarrassment that I have carried for years was for naught.

Most Romantic Restaurant

Here's my nomination for the most romantic restaurant in Boston.  Locals who have lived here long enough know that the seductive, Spanish atmosphere has a way of loosening up even the most hardened of Cambridge intellectuals. 

It was also the scene of one of my most tender memories from 2004:  the opportunity to celebrate the birth of Mary Ann Rollins' first grand daughter, moments after we received the phone call from the hospital.

Got a favorite restaurant for romantic dinners?  We want to hear your recommendation.

Favorite Romantic Destination

Got a favorite romantic destination?  Let's hear about it.  Just click on the word "comment" below and start typing.  If you want to post a photo, send a jpeg of any size to [email protected]

Several of my favorite quotes on love include references to water but they are typically streams.  Must have been all those "float" (a.k.a canoe) trips on Missouri Rivers growing up.

As I write one friend has just informed me that he can't join us because he's taking his wife to Vermont for a romantic weekend. 

Where do you go for love?

From Plato to Play: The Love of Noble Things

Well it's not really a quote on love, but *** I LOVE THIS QUOTE.  *** It hung on in my Dad's study for more than 25 years, a gift from a long time friend and philosophy professor at St. Louis University where my father taught political science. 

I wouldn't be throwing a snow tubing party at 50 if I weren't playful, but I also aspire to the noble things that Plato says we should have achieved or be ready to achieve at 50.  Since many of my peers visiting this Valentine's Day Blog will also be turning 50 this year, I invite your comment. 

"And when they have reached fifty years of age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every action of their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at last to their consummation.   The time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all things, and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according to which they are to order the State and their lives as individuals, and the remainder of their own lives also; making philosophy their chief pursuit, but, when their turn comes, toiling also at politics and ruling for the public good, not as though they were performing some heroic action, but simply as a matter of duty; and when they have brought up in each generation others like themselves and left them in their place to be governors of the State, then will they depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell there; and the city will give them public memorials and sacrifices and honor them, if Phythian oracle consent, as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and divine."

Plato, REPUBLIC, Book VII