Conversations with Dr Walter

Conversations about love

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I was brought up strictly, conservatively, and thus didn’t have many deep conversations with my parents as there were very clear boundaries as to what kinds of discussions were permissible. However, one spontaneous exchange between my mother and I remain a clear memory. She was talking about an individual who was thoroughly disliked by both my parents, and was once more going through a list of his short-comings. She stopped somewhere in the middle, thought for a moment, and then said, “But of course, as Christians, we love him”. Without thinking, I blurted out, “How can you say you love him when you have nothing good to say about him?”. I still remember the look of bafflement that spread over her face, as, perhaps for the first time, she tried to make out the distinction between love and duty. 

I have the strong sense that most of us suffer a deep confusion as to what love feels like, and have a few remarks to make in this connection. 

The first is that feelings are biologically contextualised if not based, and thus we can’t leave biology out of it, and convince ourselves that love is something purely divine, romantically real, or some kind of ideal state into which we morph when we die. Our feelings tell us quite clearly that being dead is not the best idea. However, if you read authors such as Suzanne Gieseman, Gordon Smith, Ernest Laszlo and many others, you will find your feelings challenged and possibly changed, as your scope of thought is widened to accommodate

m o r e 

than you had previously thought possible. It’s that kind of “m o r e” to which I want to pay attention.  Music, listened to sensitively, leads into this “m o r e”. Carefully articulated and thoughtfully probing questions grant opportunities to visit this “m o r e”. And of course, conversations that allow us to be authentically free and spontaneously truthful take us directly to the “m o r e”. 

A useful exercise, then, to help us to grasp what love might feel like, is to make a list of those people with whom we can and can’t have such conversations. These two lists are potentially awkward: sometimes the very people who are supposed to be the closest are really remote. My own soul friends are mostly rebels and, quite frequently, rough. I really don’t know why; I just like them.

Secondly, then, what warms and feeds the soul also tells us something about what love could feel like. “One-ness”, bliss, and beatific visions might sound far more impressive than the cat from next door or my favouritefishing spot, yet the god of minute details is just as relevant as the bigger names. 

Thirdly, simple connection communicates more than grandiose formulae of fruitless faith. Every time when I’m on the bus and I hear,” Thank you driver!” I enjoy my own quick feeling of warmth at appreciation. 

Conversations about love are quite neat dipsticks of where we’re at if we’re open enough to hear and reflect quickly on what’s being said and communicated. I sense that the quickness is key, here. I don’t like nervous dogs. I understand that if they spend enough time with me, they’re going to calm down, stop barking and then relax enough to be themselves. But the wait makes me impatient, and perhaps they sense that, and so it takes longer to happen. Tap down into the “love core” with humans, and you’ll experience a lot of nervousness, too. 

Love makes us nervous about what it means, and that’s strange if love is what it’s supposed to be.

Although anyone would be hard put to offer a satisfactory definition of love, one could always not only describe but even communicate by attitude and action, what one means by love. Kindness, care, commitment and concern are examples of such markers. They also take us towards the “m o r e”. 

For me, growth and love are strongly linked, and indeed, growth, in human terms is almost as abstruse as love. My Irish-priest friend taught me that change is the sign of growth, but forgot to tell me how to read the direction of change. I’ve met so many people who have chosen to grow the wrong way, if you know what I mean. They’ve bought into the myth of normal, about which Gabor Mate writes. Then there’s Iain McGilchrist who shows us how the shite that our brains have produced have changed brains themselves, although that’s my way of putting it, not his. That’s why, in my opinion, it’s good to hear and reflect quickly. Read between the lines as they form, because they’ll baffle you once you’ve read them and taken them for real. 

Paula, who is back next month, is clearly more askable than I am, because no-one has asked me anything. But I’ve enjoyed thinking about all who communicate with this newsletter, and I trust that the tree will grow as it should, and I do feel that the hub is quite capable of holding more than we realise.

I wish everyone the best for 2023. 

Dr Walter Willies