I’m not sure why it is so difficult for human beings to love one another.

What, I wonder, are we waiting for? This is one of my many portraits of Maria and my favorite. It hangs on my study wall above my computer. I took the picture yesterday with a Lomography art lens.

When I met Maria more than ten years ago, I fell in love with her, even if I didn’t recognize it or know it then.

I look at the news sometimes, and I wonder what it is that draws human beings to anger and judgment and argument.  What are we all waiting for?

Love exists, and if I could find it, anyone can.

I’ve done all of those nasty things that people do – just look online –  but I can’t say I loved doing them, or that they solved anything, or ever made me feel joy or meaning.

When I met Maria, I had the same feeling I had in the operating room when I looked up at the screen and saw blood rushing into my heart, which opened like a Dahlia.

It wasn’t recognizable to me as love for some years. It was more a sense of coming to life when I was with her.

At its deepest and most genuine level, the notion of love, at first sight, is spoken of in every spiritual and religious discipline. Love, at first sight, is considered the reward for being awake.

I can testify that seeing the world anew restored my sense of finally being alive, rather than simply existing.

Every time I look at Maria, I experience a richness of spirit. To love so fundamentally is to see the world around me as part of a vibrant, joyous and ongoing creation. It helps me to see right through the darkness and fear.

At first sight, I found love, my first experience of really seeing. One day, my own suffering opened me more fully than I can ever remember, and the light began to flood through me.

I learned that love came when I was open to it, and not before.

This love grounds and sustains me every day, through all of the drama and anger and hurt roiling the outside world.  It reminds me of what is important, of what matters.

The heart that rests in everything else started to beat deep inside of me.