The fruits of love

Sitting at the kitchen table with my Virginia friends, my eyes kept straying to these beautiful black peppers, seated in an array of vegetables gathered from their garden: what a glorious autumnal harvest!

But of course, you can't harvest something if you haven't sown the seeds in the first place, or spent the time cultivating the plants -- and even then, there are no guarantees.

It's a bit like love, I think.  We're not all that likely to get it if we don't -- or can't -- give it in the first place; if we're not willing to sow the seeds and cultivate the garden.  But that takes a certain amount of energy, which in turn derives from feeling loved.  So somehow, in order to get the fruits of love, we need to first find that deep capacity for love that resides within us...