GodsThespianChic Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 Many people have not learned the difference between between love and lust, and feelings and choices. Love is offering yourself as a gift, lust is focusing on what you are going to get. Feelings are emotional states that come and go, a choice is a deliberate act to love someone whether the feeling is there or not. There are many days when I do not like someone, but I still choose to love them. I couldn't have said it better myself! You're so smart, Cmom!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmotherofpirl Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 No I am simply older and have learned by doing all the wrong things first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GodsThespianChic Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 Well, in that case, I must thank you for helping me learn from your mistakes! :wub: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesiringMore Posted December 24, 2003 Author Share Posted December 24, 2003 Anyone else on what LOVE is to them? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesiringMore Posted January 7, 2004 Author Share Posted January 7, 2004 when you love something are you able then to later on hate it? what constitutes loving someone or something? are you able to detach yourself from something or someone you use to love and then feel that you don't love that person or thing anymore? is it possible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatrickRitaMichael Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 true love is sacrifice. period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SallyCat Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Patrick I do see where you sacrifice stuff for the one you love and what you are saying, but I do believe that there is more to it. I can sacrifice my lunch money for two weeks and buy a new pairs of shoes tht I love...but is that really love. I don't think so. You can't love inatimate(sp?) objects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesiringMore Posted January 22, 2004 Author Share Posted January 22, 2004 BUMP :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmjtina Posted January 23, 2004 Share Posted January 23, 2004 I think he means love in itself. Sacrifice. You can't love the objects, but you can do it for love of God. Everything you do, must be for love. You can sacrifice your lunch money for two weeks and deny yourself the shoes and give. That is love, because it is directed at someone who is in need of it. We can learn so much from the Saints and the Blesseds. "You can do no great things, only small things with great love."~Blessed Mother Teresa To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering Something Beautiful for God. ~ Blessed Mother Teresa Let us not be staisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread love everywhere you go: first of all in you own home. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a nextdoor neighbor. ~ Blessed Mother Teresa "There is only ONE THING to do here below: to love Jesus, to win souls for Him so that He may be loved. Let us seize with jealous care every least opportunity of self-sacrifice. Let us refuse Him nothing- He does so want our love!" -A letter from St. Thérèse (of Lisuex) to her sister Celine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesiringMore Posted January 30, 2004 Author Share Posted January 30, 2004 Bump for SCHMANDI's question in the I LOVE YOU thread :wavey: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katt1227 Posted February 2, 2004 Share Posted February 2, 2004 Love is the word by which we describe the mystery of God. our priest said this in his homily tonight, and I thought it was absolutely beautiful and a great explanation of what love is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laudate_Dominum Posted February 2, 2004 Share Posted February 2, 2004 This is from some scratch notes I have lying around.. Love is: 1. Something we "practice"; 2. Something that comes over us and happens to us like an enchantment; 3. An emotion directed toward possessing and enjoying; 4. A gesture of self-forgetful surrender and giving which does not seek it's own advantage; 5. A turning toward someone (ie., God, a beloved, a child); 6. An act that is ascibed to God Himself and is in a sense identical with Him. - Love signifies approval; loving someone means finding them "good". Love says "it is good that you exist". This approval is an expression of the will. Loving is a mode of willing. Human love is an imitation and kind of repitition of the perfect, creative love of God (creation is the comparitive of affirmation). Even the very first stirrings of love contain an element of gratitude. Gratitude is a reply. More like a continuation and a participation in what was begun in God's creative act. "This is the basis for the joy of love: we feel that our existence is justified" - Sartre "Love is shared joy" - St. Francis de Sales "Giving existence, conferring the right to exist"; "What being loved makes being do is precisely: be" "Man succeeds at fully existing and feeling at home in the world only when he is being confirmed" - Karl Marx "Love says 'you will not die'" - Gabriel Marcel "To love (caritas) is to will the good of the other" - Aquinas Love does not involve just a distant "neutral" statement that it is good that you exist, but ivolves a fundamental orientation of the whole person. - Josef Pieper Willing does not always have to mean willing-to-do something, rather willing can mean affirming what already is (saying "yes" to it and rejoicing in it) as a fundamental attitude and principle. (analogous to logical thinking verses intuition) Love is a value-response to the whole person and not merely the qualities of the other. - Von Hildebrand Love "sees" the other person. The higher emotions are fully spiritual, transcendent responses (spiritual affectivity, the "heart"). This love is not on the level of mere caused bodily feeling or caused psychic effect, nor is it an irrational passion overpowering the reason and will. Rather, in love our being is touched deeply by the vision of the others' beauty and value, this is a great gift going through our understanding and working in conjunction with the will. Love calls for completion (sanction), fulfillment by the will to become truly human love. This is the "self-donation" aspect which entirely regrounds the whole attitude and response of the heart making it entirely one's own. And by truly responding to this call of love, this vision of the beloved's goodness, one makes oneself utterly vulnerable. This is part of the value-response of love. The beloved is such a great good, I am willing to risk my heart to make manifest some response to such goodness and beauty. This shows to power of love in overcoming selfishness, that the beloved becomes "another self", another center in the universe. I know longer revolve around myself. Plato calls love a "Divine Madness" meaning that love raises you above the everyday level of understanding and willing and this is completely different from being overpowered by something from below. A mark of love's affectivity is the delight which the lover takes in the beloved- but this is a reverent delight not a selfish grasping. Plato says that the lover is more deeply awakened, sensitized, and responsive to the whole world of beauty and goodness through the "prism" of the beloved. This the soul of the lover "grows wings" and soars upward seeking the source of all beauty. Thus love has a formative, superactual effect in our lives. I have many more pages of notes and doodlings about love if anyone wants more reflections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laudate_Dominum Posted February 3, 2004 Share Posted February 3, 2004 Love "sees" the other person. This ties in with what I call "the certitude of love". Some might disagree but I think it's true based on my experience. I think that when you truly fall in love with someone there is a certitude about it. You don't just think they are good and beautiful, the response of true love is so total that it implies a definite certitude which I would describe as a deep inner "vision" of the essential goodness and unique, irreplaceable beauty and value of the beloved. This is a gift whereby the lover "contuits" the form or essence of the beloved to some degree. This vision of the beloved is perceived by the one loved and has in a certain sense a shaming effect. A feeling of unworthiness which is good because love desires the good of the beloved and the effect of this shame is to draw to beloved toward the higher truth of their being. To become better in other words. To live up to the truth of one's dignity and goodness. This is why when the beloved does something wrong the lover always interprets their actions in the best possible light, love gives the benefit of the doubt. Love also remains in solidarity with the beloved if they seriously fall. The failures are percieved by the lover not as the beloved being an evil person, but as the beloved failing to live up to the true goodness of their being, falls are like smudges on the diamond as it were. The lover may be sad or hurt but remains in solidarity and keeps loving the person and always sees the deeper vision of the person through the "eyes of love". So I hold that love is not blind, in fact love is the clearest vision we can have. (I'm speaking of true love not the many conterfeits.) Of course even the deepest lovers do not totally see each others deepest being. This is for God alone. True love though is a profound participation in God's knowing of the other and God's creative vision of that person which is good and beautiful. Knowing and experiencing deep love makes one more able to love God and understand how God loves us. By being a lover one can the more understand the Supreme Lover. His mercy, His patience, kindness, forgiveness, justice (because love truly desires the good, it's not wishy-washy but can in fact be quite demanding at times). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laudate_Dominum Posted February 3, 2004 Share Posted February 3, 2004 I should note again that I do not claim that the "vision" of human love exhausts the depths of the person. I hold that each person is a deep mystery. Our human nature is capable of communing with God and sharing in the Divine Life, this is the ultimate fulfillment of our nature. This implies an infinite dignity by virtue of this singular relation to God. Each person is a unique, unrepeatable utterance of Almighty God, a little "word" as it were, which ultimately remains an impenetrable secret, only fully known by God Himself. Love gives us a glimpse of the reality of human dignity. And love empowers us to see beyond the corrupt state of our fallen world. To experience something of a foretaste of Heaven and an experiential awareness of the beauty of existence as an expression of the Wisdom and Goodness of God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesiringMore Posted February 3, 2004 Author Share Posted February 3, 2004 What does it mean to be in love? Have you always told the person that you were in love with that you were in love with them? Are there exceptions when you shouldn't? how do you know when you are in love? what does it mean exactly to be IN LOVE? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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