What's Impossible?

My daughter created a ceramic plaque in middle school, later turned into a mug, that said:
   
                   "Even impossible says "I'm possible."


   Jack Johnson signs about things that may not be necessarily what "they say they are." Listen to his song.  Maybe what you believe about your life is not really accurate. Think about turning things "Upside Down" or to put it another way---  Look at life from a different point of view. When you do, you may also see your love in a different way.

Just Whistle

When a younger woman marries an older man, people can find many reasons to be critical of that arrangement and yet both Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman and Lauren Bacall, who married an older Humphrey Bogart,  realized something else in these connections. Liv said about Ingmar, in the documentary "Painfully Connected" that  "he changed my life."
  Lauren Bacall, also reflected on her marriage to Bogart  – Bacall was 19, Bogart 45 - but she found life with him exciting because she met all these interesting people. Both of these young women had a chemistry with their older husbands. I think their  relationships provide a truth about love as well. If it is a great love, it should change your life.

Lauren Bacall & Humphrey Bogart

     With the film To Have And Have Not she forged the unforgettable partnership with Humphrey Bogart. 

And I Love Her

Love is about being present. It is mostly about giving: your time, your wisdom, sharing your dreams, and yes, even your poetry and song. The man in the Spelling Bee contest, Marshall Davis Jones, shows us another aspect of love: It is not a game where you win and lose. Love is about finding the right words even if they are misspelled.

Marshall Davis Jones

   In his video "Spelling Father," you will find a very moving account of his love for his mother, but the sharing of his poetry, is another act of love.
   Listen to this mother (Whitney Houston) sing.  This tribute by Kevin Costner is another form of love, remembering a friend.

                                                              Whitney Houston sings "I Will Always Love You"

Sacred Heart

     When you look in the mirored surface of this shiny metal heart, an outdoor sculpture entitled "Sacred Heart" by the artist Jeffrey Koons, you see your own image reflected back to you. Perhaps, this mirrored  image serves as a reminder, that each of us carries within us our own sacred heart. If there are other people looking at the sculpture with you, or even the people we don't see who live or work inside the buildings mirrored against the ribbon of the heart, their faces are also reflected in the artwork. This sculpture reminds me we must all find a place to live in this world together. To achieve this togetherness, our world often forgets the sacred love we need to show one another.
    This song (below) by Rascal Flatts, is often used as wedding song. Some people have used the song for the first dance at their wedding. A wedding of two hearts is no better time to call upon a spiritual force to guide us toward a sacred love.

Forever in Time

                 

                              "Forever in Time We'll Be" from Irene in Time - Andrea Marcovicci

After her husband developed a stroke, which took away his ability   to communicate, but not his expressiveness for love,
this story, about the brain and  loving relationships, written by Diane Ackerman appeared in the NY Times:

"Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful. As imaging studies by the U.C.L.A. neuroscientist Naomi Eisenberger show, the same areas of the brain that register physical pain are active when someone feels socially rejected. That’s why being spurned by a lover hurts all over the body, but in no place you can point to. Or rather, you’d need to point to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, the front of a collar wrapped around the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers zinging messages between the hemispheres that register both rejection and physical assault."

"Whether they speak Armenian or Mandarin, people around the world use the same images of physical pain to describe a broken heart, which they perceive as crushing and crippling. It’s not just a metaphor for an emotional punch. Social pain can trigger the same sort of distress as a stomachache or a broken bone."

            So, listen to this song of love, sung by Andrea Marcovicci. Doesn't your brain feel wonderful?

The Noise of Love

In the silent, transitional passage of wakefulness into sleep, all the noises of the day drift away. The last sound you hear is your gentle final whispers of love.  The uniqueness of that  "noise" is often the beginning of sweet dreams. The poet Rumi describes that moment here:

In my ear nothing remained except the noise of love.
 No reason or no idea remained in my spirit
 Except for the beauty of the world
 Of the eternal past.
                          ~Rumi

As you begin to fall asleep,  you can only guess about the future. But the beauty of the world is always something worth dreaming about.

The Soul of the Rose

 

The Soul of the Rose ~ John William Waterhouse

Roses are best known and admired as ornamental plants grown for their flowers and scent.   They are part of the family of plants called Rosacea and science has now sequenced the genome of the Rose. That is, scientists now know the genes (sentences) that make up the beautiful plant (paragraph) called the pink rose in the chapter on Roses.
    Nevertheless, the importance of the rose is more than just its genetic structure (genome). It is the destiny of the rose that gives the Rose its importance to humankind.

    For whom is this pink rose? Which person will receive its fragrance? What hand will receive the flower?  It is this romantic mystery that make the rose important. This is the soul of the rose as depicted in the images below. 
   The future of science may allow us to create new species of the rose, but it will never be able to re-create the soul of the rose. Only the woman in this painting  by John William Waterhouse  (inspired by a poem "Come into the Garde, Maud"  by Alfred Lord Tennyson) knows why these roses draw her closer to the fragrance at the garden wall,  or why her hand touches the wall with soft sensuality.