“The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Pure Love of the Divine by Shiloh Sophia, 2013
Dear One,
Happy Day of Love 
from us love birds!
Jonathan and I send this with BIG LOVE on a day all about loving. While I know many of us don’t want to buy into the hype of Valentine’s, I personally love a day or week when I can see pink hearts and red roses everywhere I go. A day when the calendar asks us to turn toward love.
My mom Caron McCloud is one of the most loving, wise and compassionate women I have ever known. She is my first Valentine and always will be. Here we are at a Cosmic Cowgirls gathering about five years ago. She walked on to her future last year, and I am so grateful for the deep love connection we shared.
She taught me the most important advice about love that I apply in my marriage and in my friendships:
“Love is either expanding or contracting. If you think it’s staying the same, it’s contracting. So let’s expand our loving”
Take that in. Ask yourself, about your primary relationships – if it feels like it is staying the same….consider a loving action today! We can instantly do something to re-ignite the expansion of love if we choose.
True love is the one thing we can never get too much of. I am not saying there isn’t a time of transition, from how love has been, to the next evolution that time brings. This could be a deepening, or it could be a lessening.
What if we witness love as it changes and moves instead of letting it get further away? To be watchful, tender and present is a choice – don’t let love get away from you. Tend love, tend your own heart.
If we aren’t watchful of our loving, we may wake up one day and no longer feel connected, and we do not know how it happened. But it happens in increments, with small, daily choices that can lead to taking our love for granted. We often don’t know it is happening.
I invite you to tender vigilance towards your love relationships today.
Sue Hoya Sellars taught me that ‘being an artist is so romantic’, and it wasn’t about a person, but rather a curated experience of being in love with life. Through the framework of artist, we consciously choose a state of awe, of curiosity, of amazement. This naturally translates to our lovers and friends. And often, others love to be around those living in love!
I am a big fan of LOVE and wish to share this love with you today – right now! Loving you makes me expand my loving presence each time I write and draw for you. That is love expansion in community through Intentional Creativity. If I didn’t love US, I would not write to you or draw or paint for you. But because I love, I do. I can feel it moving through my blood and bone and field when I think of you. Yes. You, Sumaiyah. I know, it’s a quantum concept but it is as real as this day is.
Remember in school, how we used to ask everyone to be our valentine? All of you are my valentine
Here are a few loving inquiries to think or draw about…
How can I expand into loving more today and ever day?
What may be blocking me from falling in love with life?
Can I experience an expansion of love right now in this very moment?
with love unending,
