"Thomas Merton once said that the spiritual life is essentially to love.  One doesn’t love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone.  If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons.  This has nothing to do with love.  To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God."    ~ Paulo Coelho

To me, this sparkles.  I don’t think I agree with it on every level, or in every circumstance, but I think it’s a really important alternative and challenge to the ways love often gets defined.  Historically, so many of my good deeds have been far more about my own needs to be loved and admired, or at least liked and approved of, than about actually loving people.  Their quality has been just so different from the quality of actions rooted in the communion Coelho speaks of.  Actions that flow from such communion often have the warmth and gladness, for me, of what it feels like to be in love, no matter what age or gender or relation to me the beloved happens to be.

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