delara, interrupted

For some reason I was thinking about Valentine's Day all day today. (*How many days were in that sentence?) I don't know why. I mean, I recognize that it's May 14, so maybe I was connecting that with February 14? Who knows. It was strange.

But what kept coming up for me were questions about love - what it looks like, what it might feel like, how it manifests between people out of thin air sometimes, what attracts people to one another, what bonds people together over long periods of time. A lifetime ago, I put together a workshop on love and presented it at a Baha'i conference. The focus of the workshop was increasing one's love for God - and the same questions came up. What does that look like? What does it feel like? What bonds us to God over long periods of time?

The best part of the workshop for me was the research - reading through vast amounts of material and pulling quotations from various religious traditions, literature and arts, and scientific thinkers. Why was this my favorite aspect of the preparation process? Because they all basically said the same thing.

I haven't been able to find my notes from that workshop despite my meticulous filing system. Ha ha. But these gems from Baha'u'llah's "Hidden Words" have been floating in and out of my consciousness today:

"O Son of Man! I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life."

And this:

"O Son of Justice! Whither can a lover go but to the land of his beloved? And what seeker findeth rest away from his heart's desire? To the true lover reunion is life, and separation is death. His breast is void of patience and his heart hath no peace. A myriad lives he would forsake to hasten to the abode of his beloved."

I am enraptured by the thought of meditating on these and absorbing their meaning (or some of their meaning, for what can we truly understand in whole?) for the next few days.