One of my favorite routine and recurring exchange with Jane is when I ask her: “How much do you love Lolo?” In the beginning, she would fully stretch out her little arms and say “This much!”. Then her response became “I love you all the way up to the sky.” And then later on, her reply became “I love you all the way up to the moon and back.” And lately, she has been saying “I love you all the way up to the moon and back, a million times.” But in her naughty moments or when I have upset her, her reply would be “This much.” as she holds up index finger and thumb and make a space between them as small as possible. But she still loves me nonetheless.
Ordinary day. Ordinary words. Routine banter. But profound meaning. Priceless bonding. Unfaltering presence.
The essence of true love is to ask and to give and to affirm without limits and without conditions – all the way up to the moon and back a million times. When lovers sing “Fly me to the moon” they are not kidding. Love brings us to limitless and unbelievable flights of fancy, where dreams become realities. Everything that the human imagination can dream of and the human heart can feel are possible even if the human mind finds these impossible or even improbable.
Thus in my exchange of love with Jane, I often wonder: who is teaching whom? Am I teaching Jane and preparing her for life? Or, is she teaching me and preparing me for my next life? Am I the teacher and she my student? Or am I the student and she is teaching me things she still remembers where she came from and where I am going and soon coming home to. I have no answers but I find these questions very comforting indeed.
He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”
John 21:15-19