A love that endures...is a love that binds!

Reflections on Love and life on Valentines Day.

This is a picture of our neighbors, Ron and Dorothy, opening gifts at their 50th Wedding Anniversary party almost 4 years ago. 50 years of marriage -- Wow, what an achievement!!

In addition to that lifetime of love and labor, another thing that made this a special day was that the party was something the entire neighborhood shared in. The party was hosted at the home of their next door neighbor (who lives directly across the street from us), and in addition to their family, pretty much everyone in our little cul-de-sac community was invited (and most attended); binding us all together to share in the celebration of their love and life.


Switching gears, the second picture is one of two siblings that I was able to capture not long ago. I was at the library shooting birds and they were with their mom and I shot them because the three of them (the kids and their mom) startled the birds so that the birds flew away. And when the mom stopped to take pictures of them, since I no longer had subjects, I shot pictures of the three of them and then the two kids. It was a fluke moment, but I thought it captured the essence of happy siblings loving one another.

You see, Valentines Day doesn't have to be about romance (although Hallmark and the candy companies want you to think that). Quite often we forget that love also means family, siblings, and friends too. Don't get so caught up in the marketing of love by the Vermont Teddy Bear company (among others) that you forget to appreciate your siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends and even neighbors who love you too...

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:11-13)

Something to think about.