Love

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
-1 Corinthians 13:12-13
 
The emotional surge of falling in love happens unexpectedly.  However, there are certain conditions that make it more likely.  The foremost of these is awareness.
 
You can’t fall in love with someone or something of which you are not aware.  So awareness, or seeing, is a prerequisite of love. (And this is not a reference only to seeing with the eyes.  Seeing here serves as a metaphor for truly and directly experiencing, with or without the physical eyes.) 
 
What gets in the way of you being aware, or “seeing”?  Since beginning mindfulness training, I have discovered that my primary blindness comes from internal distraction.  My thoughts scurry restlessly, roaming everywhere except the place that I am.  I am rarely thinking about the present moment – sometimes I’m astonished that I get through most days without major catastrophe. 
 
This is blindness.  Not seeing the thing in front of me.  Not hearing the sounds around me, or experiencing emotionally the person I am with.  This is a lack of awareness, and this gets in the way of love. 
 
Sometimes when I meditate, I have the humorous experience of falling in love with the things in my moment.  Last week, I fell head over heels for my wood floor, and a week later I still swoon when I notice it again.  I know I’m not alone in these experiences – a student of mine once talked extensively of falling in love with her raisin during a mindful eating exercise.  She was smitten, completely enraptured by this tiny piece of dried fruit. 
 
I think this makes God’s heart glad, when we see stuff.  He has woven beauty and wonder throughout the world – our difficulty seeing his Kingdom is not because it is small, but because we struggle to see it. 
 
Mindfulness meditation can be one way of opening our eyes to what is there.  When we are aware, when we see, then love will spring up unexpectedly and take us off guard.  Consider yourself warned. 

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