is everything about love?

So there is this life we all get to live, each of us in our own skin. Our spirit and skin are never seperate and so the place where our feet trod and our head hits the pillow is the place where our eyes communicate to our brain and our heart surges with thought and emotion and our spirit embodied decides which step to take and what words to speak.

And I wonder if every relationship becomes of vital importance. And more than anything we need to hear words that applaud our existance. It is almost that as obvious as our need for daily bread and sleep ... we need to be loved. We need to be dear to someone. Life quickly becomes meaningless when no one seems to care we are alive ... isn't that almost the definition of clinical depression. But there are no quick fixes. Modern day sexuality only hastens our loneliness. "The mere sex partner does not come into focus as a personal being ... where the playboy is concerned, the fig leaf has merely been moved to another place; it now covers the human face." and futher "Ricoeur points out, 'Everything that makes the sexual encounter easy simultaneously speeds its collapse into insignificance. What can be had on demand necessarily loses both its value and its attractiveness. .. 'so much sex and so little meaning or even fun in it.'" (These quote are from Josef Pieper's essay on Love).

I know that was a bumpy jump to leap from love to sex, but these words are often so entangled.

In another line Pieper refer's to love as the only "green thing" in "the grayed world of a work-oriented society geared to output." But this love must be partaken and build with a great deal of commitment whether through friendships or the bond marriage. The love that will last will be one that summons us to sacrifice and change and growth. It will be a love that takes courage. It will be a love worth living for and so we will take up the surgeon's blade and cut away all that distorts and corrupts.

And so if you are young take very seriously the friendships you have ... love in such a way that you are constantly saying, "I care that you exist, I am so happy that you are alive and here, I laud and celebrate your being by my side."

And if you you are in a dating relationship, take it seriously and know that you have a chance to build something that will last your whole life ... that will be a well of life and a summons to remain fully alive. It will take sacrifice ... this is a concretely connected to Christ's admonition that if you are to find life you will have to lose it first.

And if you are struggling, do everything to hold on.

These are pretty random thoughts ... I don't know that they hold together and I am certain this is no comprehensive encouragement. (Again .... blogs are always incomplete right?)