Love is: Choice, Action, Adventure, Truth

Love is a choice. Carter Heyward:

"Love is a choice – not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversation with humanity – a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is a choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life."

Love is an action. bell hooks:

"To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility."

Love is an adventure. Robert Bly:

"Falling in love, as our story suggests, is one of the adventures promised to the soul in return for its agreeing to be born on this planet."

Love is a truth. Thomas Page McBee:

"...we learned we could be both powerful and fragile at once. Love isn't a promise – it's a truth as uncontained as waves and as unmoving as the redwood groves we drove through, holding hands across the gearshift the whole winding way back home."

Sources

Carter Heyward, quoted in White Crane Journal, Issue #57, Summer 2003, p 26.

bell hooks, quoted in Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, Center City, Minn.: Hazelden Publishing, 2010.

Robert Bly, in Robert Bly and Marion Woodman. The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998. p. 24.

Thomas Page McBee, Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man.