When I was a child one of my favourite toys was my kaleidoscope.  I loved looking inside the little opening at one end, twisting the chamber, and watching the brightly coloured pieces at the other end fall into new ways of being together and reflecting off mirrors to create a symmetrical wonder.  A little nudge here, a shake and turn there, turning the whole thing more toward the light…the outcome was always different and I loved the mystery and surprise of it.  It was a simple toy that brought much pleasure.

I was reminded of this toy the other day as I walked with a friend, and shared a bit of my journey into a deeper embrace of love.  The word kaleidoscope came out of my mouth and I was caught by the complete fit of that word when thinking about love. 

There are so many different ways to enter into and receive the wonder and mystery and surprise of love.  There are so many different aspects and expressions and presentations to love, that really, to try and define love, or to put words to it in some way, seems almost shameful…seems to rob it of the fullness of its essence leaving it somehow “less than”.

As I think about this, I am struck by the risk of doing anything more than just abandoning ourselves to love; that the best and most freeing thing we can do is to simply embrace and enjoy it.  Too often we attach definitions and meaning to love that quickly turns into heavy baggage for ourselves and for those we seek to walk in love with.  Expectations form within us betraying love’s full essence, reducing it to certain expected evidences that “prove” its existence and too often blinds us to its gift.

That is not to say we should never speak to love and try to name the creative ways it is expressed in word and deed.  It is to say that we should do so with humility and care, recognizing that we are only capturing a snapshot of love in that expression for that moment.  Trying to experience love in a certain way or the way we did “last time” can leave us missing out on new and beautiful expressions of it “this time”.

I feel like I have crossed over some invisible yet very real line to the side of freedom where I can increasingly simply enjoy love’s various presentations in relationship with each person I participate in life with. 

It is a freedom that allows for people to come together and to rest in new and wondrous ways, enjoying the simple gift of love without locking in the experience to being a prescribed and defining evidence that must be present each time.  Like the pieces in the kaleidoscope coming together and creating a unique expression that is to be enjoyed, any expression of love reveals that all of its elements are also there.  It is for us to discover and enjoy how those elements are coming together and being reflected in the present, and to receive or offer love freely, trusting that it is the essence, more so than the specific expression, that matters.

A final note:  this is not to elevate love for love’s sake.  There is much in the world that speaks to love as if it stands on its own.  Not so.  Love, in all of its kaleidoscope essence, is itself an expression. It is not “love is god”, but rather, “God is love”.