Love

My post on fasting a few days ago generated several great conversations with friends. One of them decided to join the fun. He fasted this weekend. Funny thing about his fast, though. His fast was about adding something into his weekend rather than taking something out. He fasted love, the word love. His fast was to say love as often as he could throughout the weekend.

I'd never heard of a fast that lived in increasing some behavior. But if anyone could pull such a feat off, such a fast, it was him!

Over the last few years we've joked about my fasting. When I fast, he reaps blessings. I go a few days without eating and he suddenly gets some new understanding about something that's puzzled him for years, even decades. Or I fast 12 hours without telling him and he can't figure out why all of a sudden people who've been out of touch are all calling on the same day.

He had this phenomenon in mind when he "fasted" the word love. He wanted to see what I'd get out of his love fast.

What I got was a greater conscious awareness of loving others in my life. In particular, I'd been resisting the notion of being "in love". Why did I resist? I don't know. Scared, mostly. Making it mean something more than what it is. It's an experience of another person. That's all. I saw it as a gateway to the beginning of the end of a relationship.

Love is the experience of connecting with and intimately knowing the divine nature of another human being. I felt that this weekend.

Love fast.
Fast Love.