"He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open."

"Your smile, my love, like the smell of a strange flower, is simple and inexplicable."

"Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it makes love to you."

[all 3 quotes above are from a book called "Whisperings, The Inspirational Writings of Rabindranath Tagore On Nature, Love and Life".]



In her autobiography, "The Story of My Life" Helen Keller tells how as a deaf and blind child she learned from Anne Sullivan the meaning of love.



"I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word 'love'. This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me; but at that time I did not like to have anyone kiss me except my mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently around me and spelled into my hand 'I love Helen.'



"What is love?" I asked.

"She drew me closer to her and said, 'It is here', pointing to my heart...Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.




"I smelled the violets in her hand and asked, half in words and half in signs, a question which meant 'Is love the sweetness of flowers?'

"No" said my teacher.

"Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.

" 'Is this not love?' I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came...



"A day or two afterward...the sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers, but suddenly the sun broke forth in all southern splendour. Again I asked my teacher, 'Is this not love?'



" 'Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out,' she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained: 'You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.'

"The beautiful truth burst upon my mind...I felt that these were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirit of others."



-excerpted from "The Treasure Chest" edited by Charles L. Wallis




PEACE

Posted by Evydense on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 9:39 a.m. | Permalink