Real love

The nature can teach us the virtues of real love, which begins with humility and patience.

It certainly has taught me. Wandering through the woods, experiencing vast spaces, free of human interference and mess. The most magnificent, or the most cruel (!), of its displays instils a sense of modesty: makes me feel insignificant in the abyss of the history of life and all its forms. 

Just look at us—merely a star

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."#OTD 30 yrs ago @NASAVoyager took this picture pic.twitter.com/ylLzig2txS

— Stephanie Hamilton, PhD 🌌☄️🔭 is at #AAASmtg (@SpaceSciSteph) February 14, 2020

My favourite verse in the Bible, Corinthians 13:4, talks about love; it was always one of the rare parts of the Bible that made sense to me. It takes me to a place so far from busy streets, ugly politics, and nonsensical conflicts. It takes me to a pathless forest, the loudest creek, the chirpiest bird nests, and a roaring lion field. Replace love with nature and you get the essence of being. 

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.