Loving Through The Cracks

So you want to practice unconditional love?
But can you truly stand in the fire that it demands?
Can you hold the grief when it seeks its freedom?
Can you hold your own when in the sweet storm of its presence?
What about the acceptance that what you love the most can die?
That you have no control over how or when that might happen?
Can you love so fully and relentlessly that even when your heart breaks you can let grief pour out, and more love flow back in?

When the ache comes, can you breathe into it and not shy away?
When you want to howl till blood seeps from your lips, can you come into stillness?
When that love is so far in the cosmos that they seem unreachable, can you still love through the fear?
If this love has wronged you, can you still love them with compassion?
Can you hold the tamarind sweetness and sour of love?

And what of the days when you can’t contemplate loving ever again?
Can you summon up more love with no judgment or agenda?
What of the days when the despair is so loud?
Will you then cast more spells of love that dispel the old dark dog?
Do you understand the honor that comes with holding the post of unconditional love?

The warriors path is not of violence.
It is the path of the heart that can be broken over and over and over again.
And still it says, “Oh love, let me drink of you till the Beloved comes to draw my final and last breath and I become nothing more than ether in the sea of unconditional love.”