Maybe you’re rooted in love and have always been.
Maybe the warmth of love has shone on you well, and heartily.

Or maybe you lived a long life or portion thereof
in a cold place, where love felt far away
and at some point, when you knew it was time
you picked up your roots in search of sun.

And maybe you found it, soaked it in deeply.
Maybe your branches grew thick
and your roots down deep to Life’s water
And you knew that your search,
with its sharp edge of unknowing,
was through.

But maybe you’re more like a boy or a girl -
rootless, weightless now
but for your longing.

Maybe that weighty wish, that reaching for love
has given your feet flight
and you’ve run from a mad world
of your own or others’ making
and you’re breathless now,
resting in the branches of a sun-soaked tree.

And maybe trees like this one
and little boys or girls like these
together
are the power that fuels love’s sun.

Maybe their meetings of
wishes and fulfillments
roots and runnings
frailties and thick, weathered branches
are the one great warming of us all.

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Little Jack Frost, by Kate Rusby
from her album The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly

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Little Jack Frost (lyrics)

Here is a tale of the trees in a wood
They were never that pleased on the land that they stood.
So they upped and they walked as far as they could
‘Til they felt the sun shine on their branches.

I was little boy lost, and I was little boy blue
I am little Jack Frost but I am warm through and through
It’s not easy to hide when your heart’s on full view
Oh, tonight, cruel world be forgiving
Oh, for once in my life I am living.

There they did stand and there they did stay
When there came a young boy who was running away
From a mad world, a bad world, a world of decay
And it’s comfort he sought in their branches

I was little boy lost, and I was little boy blue
I am little Jack Frost but I am warm through and through
It’s not easy to hide when your heart’s on full view
Oh, tonight, cruel world be forgiving
Oh, for once in my life I am living.

There we found love and there we found joy
And the warmth in his heart oh, it filled the young boy
And his friends taught him magic and secrets of old
While the trees kept him safe with their branches.

I was little boy lost, and I was little boy blue
I am little Jack Frost but I am warm through and through
It’s not easy to hide when your heart’s on full view
Oh, tonight cruel world be forgiven
I was little boy lost, and I was little boy blue
I’m little Jack Frost but I am warm through and through
It’s not easy to hide when your heart’s on full view
Oh, tonight, cruel world be forgiving
Oh, for once in my life I am living.

About a year ago I met Rachael Maddox at her blog, rach.mad.love. I was immediately struck by the brightness of her light – her passion for loving well, her deep wish to do good in the world, her intentionality about nurturing community, her integrity in naming and acknowledging her darkness and her light. She felt and still feels like all the best passion you can imagine, poured into one.

Today she talks with us about the connections she’s making between love and trust. I wrote yesterday about our theme being love this month, and my intention of exploring some of the fears that sometimes grow in love’s shadow. Rachael’s words today speak well to the fear that love and trust are all-or-nothing things that you either have, don’t have, or, given the right amount of strain, can lose for good. They speak, too, to the suspicion that the cost of love, and the cost of growing trust, are just too great.

Thank you, Rachael, for sharing so heartfully here!

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A new month is upon us, and one that typically holds great warmth or great dread, depending on how nestled you feel into love.

No matter where you are on the spectrum of feeling loved or not, though, and however hard it is to actually define it, I think all of us recognize love as a wonderful, beautiful thing. It’s what we yearn for, deeply, what we seek, fight for, protect, nourish, and sacrifice hugely on behalf of. And, conversely, what we mislabel, misunderstand, betray each other in search of, and grieve when it looks to be lost. Something this desired, this full of depth and breadth and weight in our collective hearts and minds, can’t help but have really large shadows.

There’s irony in that thought because love really does shrink fear, but I think the point remains: fear hangs out in love’s shadows. It breeds there. Our need and wish for and cherishing of love are all so intense that the thought of losing it or never finding it or actually being hurt by some version of it we’ve come to trust: the intensity of that fear often trumps all.

This site is all about tending trust, so I thought it fitting to walk into this month of love, so fraught with so much fear for so many of us, with an eye for growing trust in love’s shadow. This month, posts here will all orbit around love. I hope that with each one, the fears that we know in relation to love can begin to be brought into a safe and gentle light, and love’s shadow will begin to be filled with far less of them, and far more of the warmth and hospitality that love truly does contain.

In celebration of that warmth and that hospitality, everything in my Etsy store is 20% off for the month of February (to see what profits there support, click here). At check-out, use the 02LOVE coupon code to apply the discount. And if you’re looking for a Valentine’s gift, placing orders this week will ensure delivery by the 14th.

I’m also eager, at this blog’s young age, to find the people who might resonate with what’s happening here. If you like what you’re finding here, would you consider helping me spread the word about it? I’d be grateful for that warmth!

Here’s to love, in it’s purest form, and to a path of knowing and living inside of much more of it!

P.S. Lindsey Mead, of the blog A Design So Vast and our interview here last week, has graciously posted a reflection of mine in her space. I’m honored to be there and encourage you to explore the wonderful, trust-inducing work she’s doing there daily.