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We teach our youth about love....

11/6/2014

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by Gwendolyn Plano
The sun had not yet risen when the call came. It was campus police, informing me that a female student was found unconscious on the floor of a dormitory, a lifeless newborn by her side. I dressed quickly and rushed to the hospital to help in any way I could.

The hospital staff knew me by name, as I was the substitute mother for those students who lived far from home. At the university, I was in charge of student services, and as such was brought into the after-classroom life of students. Many nights I had left the comfort of home to sit bedside with a barely conscious scholar—someone who had drunk too much, fought too fiercely, or had done something else foolish.

Mary knew who I was when I walked into her room, but I had never met her. With tubes of medications flowing into her veins, she whispered she was sorry that I was awakened. Struggling to speak, she explained her story.

She thought the baby was due the end of December, and had it been born then, only her boyfriend and his family would have known. He wanted the baby, she explained. He beat her, she added. She was afraid of him and was terrified that he would soon be at the hospital.

Mary had told no one of the pregnancy—not her parents, not her friends, not medical personnel, not anyone at the university. For eight months, she hid her condition under layers of clothes. Everyone thought she was just overweight.

Suddenly there was shouting outside the door. Three women rushed into Mary’s room and demanded the baby; nurses were in pursuit and tried to get them out—explaining that the infant was in the morgue. They would not accept that this was the case. They threatened Mary; they threatened the nurses; they threatened me. And, then the police arrived and removed them.

I always think of Mary at this time of the year and wonder how she is doing. After she recovered, she sought counseling, left her abusive boyfriend and graduated from the university. Maybe she is an attorney now—or a doctor, a teacher, a social worker. Whatever her profession, she is a remarkable human being, a survivor who surmounted difficulties that most of us only read about in the papers.

Mary was not the only student I met covered with bruises, though she was the first student I knew who carried a baby through her secret travails. Sadly, one-third of adolescents in America are victims of dating abuse. One-third. And though schools have a role in educating students about healthy relationships, it is we—the public—who shoulder the primary responsibility.

It is we who teach our youth about love.


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Really, what is Perfect Love?

8/6/2014

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My friend and colleague, Fran Kramer, shares her perspective of Perfect Love. As a life coach, writer, educator and artist, she uses intuition to heal, problem solve and create. She lives in Hawai'i - a real garden of healing.

Her beautiful reflection follows:


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We all want to experience Perfect Love yet do we ever seriously ponder the subject?  In answering the question most of us have no trouble coming up with definitions based on our experiences of not receiving it.  We all know what it isn’t.  To take a positive approach in defining Perfect Love, we could use St. Paul’s classic definition found in his first letter to the Corinthians 13:4-13 which gives a long list of love’s attributes such as “love is patient”, “love never fails,” etc.  Then there is the Dalai’s Lama’s pithy and direct bombshell, “Love is the Absence of Judgment.”   Or for an extended and complete analogy of love we may look at the life and death of Jesus who, paradoxically, made many judgments on people.   

Love: A Universal Truth and a Conventional Truth

I think Perfect Love is one of those spiritual paradoxes which can only be understand and practiced through an open, intuitive heart that doesn’t see reality as “either/or” but as “both/and.”   (See my blog “Intuition Helps Us Plumb the Depths of Spiritual Paradox,” May 30, 2014.) There are two levels of reality we are dealing with.  On one hand we have “Love is the Absence of Judgment” which conveys a universal truth.  It implies that at the root of all reality there is a perfect love that draws all things to itself.  This is a universal truth which is true for eternity and in all situations.  It underlies the teachings of all major religions.   To intuitively realize this truth at an experiential level is a major accomplishment of a human life.

On the other hand, we must live in the everyday world of conventional reality where we are called upon to make judgments all the time such as when we are evaluating our own behavior or that of our kids.    There are times when we must make difficult judgments indicative of tough love that often don’t look very loving on the surface such as when to divorce an abusive spouse or send a childish adult packing.  How and when do we love in these situations?   The complexity of these situations can be compounded if I need to ask if my judgment helps the greater good or helps the individual.   Often following the rules will only complicate or cause harm in the situation.  Sometimes to do the loving thing, we have to break the rules.  Then there are cultural differences.  Some cultures say doing one thing is right and another culture will say doing that very thing is wrong.  These are conventional truths we all have to live with which are only true for particular times, places, people, and cultures.  But when we do the right thing at the right time based on an intuitive, empathetic understanding of the situation, we are practicing love in conventional reality.  And most people will recognize it for what it is.

The Deeper Question

How do you resolve the differences between the Perfect Love of Universal Truth with the love of Conventional Truth?  That is the deeper question.  It is a paradox:  How to not judge in a situation that requires making a judgment.  In practicing Perfect Love, the task is to intuit moment by moment how the Universal Truth of Perfect Love can apply to this conventional truth I am dealing with now.    Only the intuitive heart has the answer.  It is the center point holding both Universal Truth and Conventional Truth.  It is a spiritual dimension which processes
the tensions between these two realities, the point that visualizes “on earth as it is in heaven” – and acts accordingly.  The result is Perfect Love: An intelligent action informed by the empathetic awareness of Universal Truth and Conventional Truth acting in my life.

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What is Perfect Love?

7/30/2014

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by Gwendolyn Plano
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For most of my professional life, I worked with college students helping them with one difficulty or another. Sometimes the problem was easily resolved (i.e., moving the student from one residence hall to another or finding the needed resources). But, more often than I wish to recall, the presenting problem required much more than common ingenuity; it required wisdom, compassion--and justice.

Residential colleges are microcosms of the whole, and as such, they experience the joys and the sorrows of larger communities.  

No one knew that while I worked with students who were victims of date rape or battery, that I knew first hand their fear. I kept my life hidden behind closed doors. What was my shame, though, is our collective indignity. 

The statistics are staggering--every 9 seconds in the United States, a woman is assaulted or beaten. We collectively ignore the facts and listen as commentators argue about whether or not a NFL player should be suspended for hitting his lover so hard that she lay unconscious. How will a suspension impact the team? they ask.

A few months ago, former President Jimmy Carter issued a call to action to end the abuse and subjugation of women, and he referred to it as the “worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on Earth.” In his new book, he relates subservience to violence, and asks all of us to look afresh at our organizations and systems.

Of recent, I've been asked to explain Perfect Love. It is easy to say what it is not: it does not have a hierarchy of value, it does not hurt or diminish, it is not male or female.

The Perfect Love of which I write, is a love that is without human limitations or conditions. It is a love that holds us, permeates our being, cherishes our very existence.

Through hurdles great and small, I've come to know this love.......and that is why I write, for through this love I now know joy.


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What is Perfect Love?

7/23/2014

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A glimpse through a photo.....

Perfect Love--without limitations, without conditions, without expectations.....

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Discovering the Miraculous....

6/21/2014

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If our joys and our dreams lead our way, miracles await us it seems.

When standing before our personal fork in the road, the choice is not simply this job or that, the choice is between what has been and what can be. 

It is the unknown that frightens many of us. "What if" questions badger us, and in the end, we may choose not to choose, because we at least know where we presently stand.

Some among us leap like the dolphins in the sea, and though I envy their free spirits, I've discovered that even baby steps can transform worries into materialized dreams.


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I have a painting of a mandala entitled Soul's Stillness, hanging in a very visible location in my home. It draws me into its center, where light emanates and where my heart speaks. The artist, Clare Goodwin, quotes John O'Donohue to explain her work:

"When your way of belonging in the world is truthful to your nature and your dreams, your heart finds contentment and your soul finds stillness. You are able to participate fully in the joy and adventure of exploration, and your life opens up for living joyfully, powerfully, and tenderly."

Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find such stillness and freedom. I wrote Letting Go into Perfect Love to describe what that journey has been and is for me. Though we all travel different paths, don't we all seek such a love--extreme?

Recently I was contacted by author Vivienne Duke and was asked if I would consider reading her book, These Wings Can Fly. It was an honor to do so, and as I traveled with her, one page after another, I realized I had found a friend--a sister across the seas. She, too, had discovered the miraculous, and through the internet, she also found me. 

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An Unexpected Love Story...

6/2/2014

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I hadn’t seen him before, an elderly man slight of build, pushing a wheelchair which held his bride. He greeted me as he entered the church with a handshake, gentled by time. A farmer, I concluded, his hands rough and thickened by shovels, grease, hammers and bales of hay. I know you, I thought, remembering the hands of my father and grandfathers, uncles and brothers. Through kindly eyes dimed by time, he introduced me to his wife now slumped by his side.

“I love you”, I wanted to say, but all that came out was, “Can I help you?” How do we tell a stranger that we hear their story through the furrows of their brow, the grip of their handshake, and their smile?

When later I sat in my reading corner entertained by bluebirds, finches and arguing mallards, I found a different love story in the book Loveyoubye. This one didn’t end with togetherness, but instead love broken and love redefined. I followed the writer’s heartbeat down a trail of thorny thickets to her decision that freed her heart--and her life. And, I listened to the universal soul speak of crushed hopes and rediscovered dreams.

Maya Angelou's words come to mind: "All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike."

The love story is much bigger than we might imagine.


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Touching Perfect Love

2/13/2014

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I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you simply, without problems or pride:

I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this,

in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,

so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.


Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets   



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The Magic...

1/1/2014

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Just saw the film, Saving Mr. Banks. I thought the movie was about the making of a movie, and in a way, it was. But (and it is a huge BUT), the film really was about me--and you--and all of us. As children we saw things, felt things, and concluded things that may have frightened us or confused us. Maybe we tried to re-make that which we saw, felt and concluded. After all, we were and are amazing creatures with incredible abilities to transform our reality. How else could we let go, forgive, and move forward.

Look into a child's eyes...who cannot see the magic?

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Perfect Love

11/19/2013

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Deep within each of us, there is a well of love—a place of wholeness, a place of completeness. This sacred well is alive with wisdom and tenderness. It is our true self; it is where Perfect Love resides. This all-encompassing and unconditional love draws each of us home. And ever so slowly, as we grow more confident in our journey, letting go into Perfect Love becomes a way of being.
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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ―Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning


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