Love Quotes & Sayings

Kate Loving Shenk asked:


We’ve all heard this before: Fear is the opposite of love and faith. Fear is a good indicator that we’re not living in the present moment and we’ve forgotten to seek out solitude.

I had a friend once who was driven to get rid of fear in his and his familie’s life to such an extent that he took his family up in a private plane, ignoring the pleas of his 8 year old daughter not to go, and crashed into the side of a mountain in Northern California.

They were instantly killed.

We were doing river rafting trips together down the Klamath River. This was his summer business and I worked with and for him.

He was consumed by the need to get rid of all fear. I could not grasp this concept nor get into his enthusiasm for this goal. And when all 4 of these wonderful people met an untimely death, I began to see fear as a teacher in life. It exists in all of our lives for a reason.

The elimination of inner fear is worthy of our focus. I believe my friend became confused about what kind of fear could or could not be dealt with by self-will or god/ess will.

Resistance to life is the #1 fear I am working on, for instance. I am a night person and resist getting out of bed every single day.

I go to a conference every Wednesday morning. High ranking doctors and residents attend these. I always perceive them to be arrogant and unfriendly.

So I resist going there, but go, anyway.

I began to figure out that if I get rid of the resistance, and embrace what is and make peace of mind my only goal in life, then there will be a break through with all this resistance.

Today, I actively concentrated on the antidote to fear–Love and Enthusiasm for the new day. I got out of bed, did my meditation and duties with an inner sense of optimism.

I got to the conference and authentically felt good natured towards every one there. I smiled. One of the doctors who never seemed to like me, greeted me like a long lost comrade.

I sat next to the department head of OB/Gyn and greeted her as a dear friend.

I purposely beamed love to everyone in the room. When a negative or judgmental thought arose about anyone there, I immediately relinquished this to god/ess.

“The love (god/christ/buddha/krishna/allah) within me blesses that which is within you.”

Another fear antidote is the practice of Ho’oponopono. The simplicity of it makes it very easy to remember. The phrases: I love you, Thank you, Please forgive me and I am sorry are inwardly chanted at all times.

Drs Len and Vitale, co-authors of “Zero Limits” about Ho’oponopono as a spiritual practice, have simplified the practice even further to the one phrase: I love you.

However, I also always say thank you because of the power of gratitude, also a fear busting agent.

I cannot explain how this works, only that it does. Inwardly chanting these phrases in whatever order (or no order) cures insomnia, anxiety, fear, depression and feelings of alienation.

Simple practices such as Ho’oponopono bring peace to the birth and death beds as well as the sick bed. When the nurse or healer is calm then everything around her is at peace.

Ho’oponopono is a tool to use at all times, as mentioned, but in times of conflict, miscommunication or emergency, this practice serves a great purpose. The practice may even prevent further trauma, chaos or death.

Or if death is inevitable, a peaceful death will manifest.

This practice or the spiritual practice of your choice creates happy and balanced days. Every moment is an opportunity for spiritual growth.

As long as I align my center of focus on Love, fear and resistance vanishes.

After my friend and his family perished in the airplane crash, I wrote stories about my friendship with him. I wrote letters to him explaining how much I loved him and his beautiful family.

One day soon after I wrote my story, my niece and I pulled up next to a car at a red light.

The driver of that car looked over at us. It looked just like our friend.

He smiled broadly and looked happy and other worldly. We both saw an illuminated quality around his head.

Then he took off as he waved a goodbye.

My niece and I said: “Did you see that?”

We compared notes and we both saw him the same way–as a fearless and illuminated light being.

So we both were able to let him go.

We knew that his own death finally conquered the fear he was resisting.

We also were fearless about death, as a result.

Kate Loving Shenk asked:


ved a Bull Frog in the cistern we are restoring in our 100 year old barn. She is a beautiful creature and has lived there for for perhaps more than a year. But since we are about to do some heavy duty construction on the barn’s foundation, I needed to go down through a very narrow hole to retrieve her.

I grabbed her with two hands and looked into her eyes before placing her in a plastic jar to hand to Tom, my husband, who had created a large pool for her in the basement.

A Saint Francis moment, indeed.

Saint Francis moments abound here on Blue Heron Farm, which we call this beautiful place.

We live on the meandering Conestoga River, bringing geese, heron, ducks and bird life to us in abundance. And Frogs, of course.

We have deer friends who are secure here after our eighteen years of residency.

One friend in particular is a deep brown color and we plant a tomato garden for her and her family every year.

She stands and looks at us in the early spring each year as if to say: Hey! Don’t forget to plant my garden!!

Humans are not the most trustworthy species as far as deer are concerned.

The fifth aphorism of Pananjali states: “When a person is steadfast in his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in his presence.”

The deer, racoons, geese, frogs and heron all use our property as a refuge.

They know they are safe and we marvel in their company.

Hanging out with these creatures of God-ess reminds me of Saint Francis and what I call the Saint Francis effect.

My dogs are the recipient of great love in what they teach us in this life time: unconditional love, forgiveness, and great patience in the face of human foible.

The greatest book ever written about Saint Francis is called: “God’s Pauper: St. Francis of Assisi” by Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek.

The book was out of print for many years but then was re-published in paperback in 1999. I got a copy as soon as I heard about it, circa 2002.

Reading the book transports consciousness to a mystical perspective.

The prologue of the book serves as an example:

“If I have omitted many of Francis’s sayings and deeds and if I have altered others, and added still others which did not take place but which might have taken place, I have done so not out of ignorance or impudence or irreverence, but from a need to match the Saint’s life with his myth, bringing that life as fully into accord with its essence as possible.

“Art has its right, and not only the right but the duty to subject everything else to its essence. It feeds upon the story, then assimilates it slowly, cunningly, and turns it into legend.

“While writing this legend which is truer than truth itself, I was overwhelmed by love, reverence and admiration for Francis, the hero and great martyr. Often large tears smudged the manuscript; often a hand hovered before me in the air, a hand with an eternally-renewed wound: someone seemed to have driven a nail through it, seemed to be driving a nail through it for all eternity.

“Everywhere about me, as I write, I sensed the Saint’s invisible presence; because for me, Saint Francis is the model of the dutiful man, the man who by means of ceaseless, supremely cruel struggle, succeeds in fulfilling our highest obligation, something higher even than morality or truth or beauty: the obligation to transubstantiate the matter which God entrusted to us and turn it into spirit.” Nikos Kazantzakis

Do we all have this same obligation? to transubstantiate the matter which God entrusts to us and turn it into spirit?

Only Nikos Kazantzakis could or would ask that question and have us wonder if we, too, can rise to this test of human potential?

Communing with the animals of Mother Nature these last eighteen years continues to be a spiritual practice: of being riveted in present moment reality, of experiencing compassion and love for all creatures great and small, and in these spaces of infinite awareness, we perceive the fragile preciousness of this world and beyond.

The Saint Francis statue which beautifies the flower garden is also a reminder of this fragile balance.

The Bullfrog in her new home typifies many more hours of grace as we care for her. The dogs know she is here to stay, probably knew this long before I did.

The Saint Francis effect is now clear. All of these years of animal communication and sharing the land and our home, and reading Nikos Kazantzakis’s words today, has simplified this.

As we look to the Saints and in this case, Saint Francis for guidance, we are automatically transforming matter into spirit.

God-ess has entrusted this beautiful planet to us, our families, homes, our very lives; may we care and love and transform all of it and ask the infinite realms, which surround us at all times, to help us remember their guiding presence and to learn to access it the moment we ask.

May we know that these wishes are granted ceaselessly.