Where Is Love?

Remember that plaintive little song the boy Oliver sang in the musical movie, Oliver? Whether we know it or not, we all sing it every day. We wake up, we look at the clock, we reach out for the name of the day, and we spend the rest of the day looking for what? Looking for love.

We think it’s “out there.” We take steps to find it. Somewhere, sometime, we learn that Love is within. All we need to do is catch that Intuition, give it to Hope, let Hope hand it to Faith and Faith to Understanding. From Understanding we gather Fruit and then? Then we find ourselves at Home. At Home with Love.

To me, that is the whole purpose of living. It is life in a nutshell. We’re all wandering through a wilderness and our progress depends on the search for Love. Unfortunately we come across enemies of our own making on our daily walk. Fears, doubts, destructive means to worthy ends, (like wars?), and a multitude of dragon-like apparitions plague our paths, but we have no choice but to carry on our search. Even death cannot terminate the great truth of Life and the power of Love. (If this is not true, I’ll find it out, but I’m betting it is!)

The longing we felt with young Oliver to find Love is our guiding star. And then? Then we find that we are the star! We are at Home. All our loved ones, past and present, are here too and we find no distance between us, no painful separation, no disconnection, no unloving perceptions of anyone. Our Father-Mother sits at the head of the table, send us off to the school of Life where the teacher is Truth. In the classroom, on the playground, in the neighborhood, on vacations, at the office, on the worksite, on our daily walk, in our daily talk, we learn to know Love, express Love, embrace Love. Real love knows no pretense. Even courtesy is love in little ways. Large or small, Love cannot help being honest and real. No matter what denials of love may bruise our feet, assault our sensitivities, invade our efforts, we must travel on.

Love does not travel alone. She holds hands with Wisdom and lets Wisdom lead. She knows to let others learn and discover on their own while she watches and guards their progress. In my childhood bedroom a picture hung on the wall. It said all of this in visual language a child could understand. Perhaps you’ve seen that picture too. It’s a guardian angel standing next to two little children playing beside a country road. The children could be in danger from any number of things but they do not know it. Neither do they know their guardian angel is there, but that’s just the way it is. I don’t know what happened to that picture but I’d love to find it. Maybe in an antique mall? Never mind, I have it here in my head.

As children grow they are like angels in training. They learn how to live in harmony and peace with their fellows. They see law as emanating from Principle, not as man-made. But they do not presume to be a law to others. Rather, they strive to be a law to themselves. Only then can they influence the actions of others. 

A good mother and father stand as pillars of humanity. They provide a home, a place to be fed, sheltered, clothed, taught, loved, and tucked into bed at night. Oliver found his home, and so will we. Love is what it's all about and we're living it hour by hour, day by day, year by year, until we wake up to find ourselves Home.