Then looking forward and moving forward comes with a glint, a shimmer, a hand, a smile, a friend, a promise of your impending success.

Over and over they come like guests

some welcomed, others unwelcome. 

Dark and foreboding or light and joy filled.

I have been upon the most exquisite ships

on ancient seas and blessed by the Pope.

I have witnessed murders,

critical illness

and falling from the sky.

A dark spirit came to lasso me

and didn’t win.

I bite back.

We must first begin by defining love. Love has so many different definitions. We have Homer’s definition of love as upholding honor, Socrates’ ideal forms as the perfect love, Aristophane’s soul mates and yet not one ever seems to fix perfectly. Jesus teaches us in the story of the Good Samaritan that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. This highlights to us that love is in the doing – in our actions, not in the ways in which we ritualized a loving life in spiritual practice – an hour on Sunday and all is forgiven and right in the world. The Levite and the Rabbi in the story from Luke 10:25-37 (New International Version), were the holy men of their time, walked by the injured man. The good Samaritan, the outcast, took pity for the injured man and took care of him at whatever the cost; a form of unconditional love or Agape.

Through love are we seeking to find completion or ourselves as Aristophanes suggests in Plato’s Symposium. Are we searching for our soul mate; where the responsibility of your happiness, love and completeness is in the hands of someone else? This idea of seeking love from someone does not feel encompassing enough as a definition for love. If we are to change the world with love with this ideal then someone else always has control over it. You are at the mercy of someone else and their whims.

Are we better off to become more whole first, to know ourselves well before seeking out love? Again feels a little closer to a love definition we could work with, in the idea that Gandhi suggests by changing from within. I like this idea of love in that love drives and inspires us to attain a higher form of love for ourselves and for others. We make changes to our lifestyle, physique, our confidence in order to gain greater virtue or quality character in the eyes of our beloved. According to Aristotle this leads to a perfect or just society.

Personally I am still struggling to incorporate definitions from the great teachers. I continue to decipher the experiences I have had with love in my life and what would best work for a just, peaceful, loving world. I find myself unsure of how to say ‘I love you’. I did not grow up in a home where hugs and kisses and ‘I love you’ were given freely. But love was known. Our family was well cared for and supported – love in our house was in the doing. Was this a lesser form of love? Maybe to some, but I believe it is a valuable form to learn and experience.

Today, you could say love has been corrupted and watered down by the separation of the loving act of love (sex) and love itself. In today’s society we are having sex without love and do not deem it necessary to have sex. Where does this lead us? We become objects and not people, dispensable. We become distracted, stressed and in search of something that make us feel better. Instead of turning within to discover the real reason we are unhappy and stressed and lacking love, we look to the outside world. We search for satisfaction through material objects – clothes, shoes, cars, houses, food, and sex. We chose to drink, do drugs, blame others, read self help books, to the doctor for pills – all quick fixes for the unsettling feelings within. And yet when we see the news and the condition of the world and deeply desire it to change for the better we continue to point fingers outward. Governments, unions, ruling bodies, rich people, neighbors, friends, and family are the reasons why the world is the way the world is.

I disagree in pointing the blame outward. We must be the change we wish to see in the world and this statement is the first clue in discovering the origination of the current world’s conditions. It is up to us. We are the cause; you could say our moral compass has slipped over the generations. The ego within has taken over and the ‘I’ or ‘Me’ is much more important. To love in today’s terms is to love oneself selfishly. What can I get out of this relationship? If it is hard then I can leave and find another. What can this job give me? It is all about me, it has to be easy for me.

Partly to blame for this rise in the ‘me culture’ is the decline of religion as a strong influential force on defining love. In the past you loved because it was what God called you to do – to love one another, to share and raise a family, to know God through love. Loving was attached to something much greater than you. In today’s society we have lost the root through which we define love and are left to our own human devices to seek meaning and define it individually. We create a type of society constantly in situations where we seek external satisfaction at any cost to cure our unsettling feelings inside. We strive to attain a cure for the “me” culture at the expense of the world. Our environments, communities, neighbors and families suffer.

To change the world we must turn within and ask ourselves some hard questions. Why do I feel stressed and overwhelmed? Why do I blame others around me for the way I feel? How can I change my mind to see the good that is in my life? Why am I focused on the bad? How do I start treating myself gently, healing my emotions, understanding the turmoil that lies unresolved within me? How can I expect the world to be peaceful if I am not living peacefully?

I have seen the shift many times in my life coaching practice. Once we take a serious look personally at how we are treating ourselves in our own mind and choose to love, we realize that we have more energy to share love with our families our neighbors and our communities through acts of kindness and gratitude. A ripple effect occurs. Instead of wanting your partner to change in a difficult relationship you change within – your attitudes and beliefs. Instead of adding to the pain your hear your own and the relationship changes and heals. From there your perspective on the community you live in changes – you being to live in gratitude and share this new love with your neighbors through acts of kindness or charity. One act of loving kindness has the power to change a life forever.

Every year at Christmas, hope, faith and love are the repeated theme. With wars raging around the world through the holidays this year, I think we need to ask the question seriously – how do we create lasting change in the world? I truly believe Gandhi had is right – we must start within – create the ripple effect that is felt around the world.

Free I am
Free I’ll be
Healing is me now

Strong tall and straight
I stand
The Future holds me
in high regard

Much to do
Many yet to love
Messages yet to be delivered

Love flows through & as me
I transform before my eyes

My truth shines
Deep within it once hid
Radiating a new shade of happiness

I am free
I set myself free

(c) 2009 Tammy Younker

The next of life’s little things is….. wait for it….. a finely crafted cupcake.  Prepare yourself!  What you are about to see below is LoVE for me……  I think I have fallen in love….

What sounds better than a lemon pound cake beautifully topped with raspberry butter cream icing and a perfectly placed black berry of mother natures best???

Yes… perhaps…. a little over board…. in love with a cupcake, but alas, the joy I get from savouring every last crumb makes ANY day fabulous!

I think we spend so much time not loving the little things – my dear friend today shared that her most joyful/spiritual moments where the times she was child like – frolicking at the beach, making mud pies, laughing till you ache.  I agree with her.

As we get older and ‘life’ picks us up into the whurl wind, take a look around and find those child like, silly little things that bring you joy.  Embrace your inner child and take her out for a mud pie… or better yet a cupcake.

Live life…..with a little icing on top

Byron Katie

feeling lost alone and isolated
only way out is through the storm
through the darkness

Not wanting to be swallowed whole
i linger on the shore
looking for a clear day

cliff behind, waves before me
all the while Peace looks back at me
as i look out over the waves

Am i ready to swim?
doubt i am strong enough
will the surf crash me against the rocks?
will the water be cold?
will it spit me out like a limp fish?

kisses from the wind
encourage me on
like the embrace of an angel

skeletons of those who have gone before me
reminds me that not all survive
or wish to…

On the shore casting my fears aside
moving forward not wanting to look down

run..
free
be me…
keep looking ahead

waist deep
weeds entangle my legs
ghosts of those before
warning

pleading…. be shore bound..

faint kisses from a distance
urge me to swim
forward
peace ahead like an island
promising rest and reward….

(c) Tammy Younker 2009

both pleading for more
unable to be real
our lives past & present keep us standing still

Heart aching
wising to speak

pain distance and lost love
Speak your heart…

(c) 2009 Tammy Younker

Good morning starshine
You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
Our early morning singing song

Must be the sunshine outside today…or could be the fact I woke up this morning singing this song. I’m taking it as a very good sign on how my weekend will go.

Here is my favorite rendition.

Now you can sing along with me.

Happy Saturday,

Ty