This Sabbath Valentines Day post was written eight years ago by Brook. What are your love stories?

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I’m all about the love stories.

As a youth I would pester my “elders” for recitations of their first encounter, of how they fell in love. I would ask for pictures, for endless details, I wanted to know these things. I didn’t need these stories to draw selected bits from, to collage my own fantasy; I think I liked hearing about something that was true—something as old as time—and something, like old time, that has endured, that just is.

In Peace Like a River, Swede counters that every western is a love story. Well played, Swede. I will take your westerns and up you this: that every story—all of life—is a love story.

Love is the most basic and most dazzling of all the emotions. It’s “the first and great commandment,” to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” And the second is like unto it: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Love is the principal force behind human life. In medieval theology, it was held that love literally set the universe in motion.

Love, love, love. Love is all I need. It’s gentle, it’s kind; it is pain-filled and regretful, often the passion behind the hate. For would we hate if we could not love? And would we know true joy without it?

I regard my week, my month, my day, my life, and here is what I see:

There was a moment after school, when my big kids ran through the door all squawks and mayhem. My youngest approached them with a soccer ball, suggesting catch. They obliged, she giggled. She laughs because she loves them. (And they play because they love her.)

There was a moment in the mortuary, a side room ornamented with molding, and paintings, the world outside the window frosty and freezing, when my friends looked at one another across their daughter’s little body dressed in white, and oh so still. They looked at each other. They clasped hands. They cry because they love her.

There was moment almost seven years ago to the day that I had my first baby. She took forever to get here, emerging swollen and bruised and too big for the newborn onesie. And it hurt, that getting her here part. We—us moms—we suffer pain because we love our babies.

There was a moment in a garden, by a rock, on a cross, when He suffered and died because He loved me. (And you and you”¦)

Love is all around me. (And you and you”¦) Care to join me? Where do you see love stories? Do you have a love moment? Or what cheesy clichés did I forget?