Greetings friends, fans and family!
Abbi here, writing from the House of Mystery in Las Vegas… It’s that time of year again, when pink hearts are everywhere and dark chocolate is the gift of choice. What you may not know is that, according to some accounts, Saint Valentine was also a magician. Well, in order to be a saint you have to do something spectacular, right? What Valentinus (the Roman pronunciation) did, back around the year 270, was to make a blind girl see — a judge’s daughter, in fact.
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in one direction… It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Laying on of hands, miraculous healing and magical restorations of lost function have become commonplace in some of the tent-revival circuits. Anyone who has seen the movie Leap of Faith (from the early 90s, with Steve Martin) will be familiar with some of the methods used to create these “miracles.†Whether Valentinus used a secret method or not is up for discussion….
But, there is something to be said for the power of love to heal, the magic of a mother’s kiss on a booboo to stop pain, the comfort one receives from a gentle hug. This intersection of healing, magic and medicine is one we are looking forward to exploring more of in our upcoming conference Magic and Medicine. There are four spots still open, if you’d like to come explore with us.
http://www.magicalwisdom.com/events#457
“Love is a balm that contains the power of healing and of renewing and of everlasting life within its effulgent essence. Love is the great refiner and beautifier. Love is more! Love is the key to every door. It is the creative reality behind every righteous desire and every ardent hope. Love is the cohesive power of the universe as it binds together atoms and substance. It holds families together-the world and the entire universe. If love were withdrawn all things would fall apart and disintegrate. When a human being eliminates love from his life he too begins to fall apart. Love is not only eternal but it is the most desirable element to possess.”
— Annalee Scarin
If you love something, you give it your attention, and that which we give our attention to, becomes that which we love. The more energy we invest in something, the more we care about it… which is why we need to be mindful about where we spend the limited amounts of time that we have. Jeff and I make a conscious choice each day to spend time together… even if he’s away on tour, we spend time together on Skype. One of our practices is to hug each other for the time it takes to have three deep and gentle breaths together— long enough to feel our connection. We’re also big into eye-gazing. Check out a book called Rumi: Gazing at the Beloved: The Radical Practice of Beholding the Divine by Will Johnson if you’re ready to go deep with your beloved.
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
—Aristotle
Wishing you all the love in the world,
Abbi