‘How do I love thee, let me count the ways’

Photo - Amy Shamblen

Love is all around us and on St. Valentine’s Day it’s nice to remember all the ways that we experience love every day.

Our Mother Earth shows her love particularly in the Springtime as the song of the birds busily mating and building their nests brings joy to our hearts. 

 She loves us in providing us with clean fresh air, with nourishing food and fresh water.  It is in her love that we live and move and have our being.  And she loves us in the beauty of the long summer days, the abundance of yield of crops in the Autumn, in the quiet of the Winter. And she loves us in the rain and the sun, helping the seeds to sprout and grow, and the wind, blowing away our cobwebs.

St. Valentine’s Day is more focused on erotic love, the kind of love which we see expressed in wedding vows, and in the cards, chocolates and red hearts everywhere on this day.

We experience many other kinds of love in our daily lives too - the driver who stops in traffic to let us out of a side road, the girl in the Supermarket who takes a moment to smile and ask how we are as she serves us, the young man who holds the door for the next customer coming through.  We recognise love in the hugs of friends, the phone call when we’re having an ‘off’ day, the unexpected gift in the post, the kindness of colleagues.

Love is all around us every day, not just on the day when we celebrate love; every day can be a Valentine’s Day if we remember to notice the love all around us, if we remember to be kind and loving to ourselves and others.

As the sap rises in the trees this Spring, may the love open our hearts and minds to the flow of love that carries us through every day, and let us free that love to flow through us to all whom we love, all whom we meet, and to our precious Mother Earth too.