I WANT TO tell you about making love. Not about simple fornication, but, really, about making love. There is a difference, a really big difference. Or at least that can be so.

I've written other things about making love, like over 350 poetic verses all starting with: Making Love Is... They're about the kind of loving that exudes from character in every instance one finds him or herself completely aware of current place and circumstance, totally present in the Oneness that life simply and beautifully is. Whenever I'm asked what I do for a living, I'm so taken by this truth that I often answer, "Oh, I just make love all day." But that is not today's story.

Actually, I came to the computer this morning prompted by an extraordinarily enjoyable and fulfilling reading of Anne Lamott's rendering on writing and living, Bird by Bird. No matter how I was moved or tickled, and there was a great deal of both as I invested in soul nourishment in the wee hours of this morning and the last, my mind kept taking me back to a treasure of a story she shared about her son, Sam. It goes like this:

My son, Sam, at three and a half, had these keys to a set of plastic handcuffs, and one morning he intentionally locked himself out of the house. I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper and I heard him stick the plastic keys into the doorknob and try to open the door. Then I heard him say, "Oh, shit."

My whole face widened, like the guy in Edvard Munch's Scream. After a moment, I got up and opened the front door.

"Honey," I said, "What'd you just say?"

"I said, 'Oh, shit,'" he said.

"But honey, that's a naughty word. Both of us have absolutely got to stop using it. Okay?"

He hung his head for a moment, nodded, and said, "Okay Mom." Then he leaned forward and said confidentially, "But I'll tell you why I said 'oh shit.'"

I said "Okay," and he said, "Because of the f---ing keys."

Fantasy keys won't get you in...

I find the story delightful, and it was the last line quoted that touched a space within me, that made me realize that much of what we know and do about loving is based on fantasy. It was an inferential leap that got me here, but having made that leap in faith, I was propelled into the understanding that we are governed by all kinds of fantasies that keep us from loving as we were created to be.

It's fantasy's keys that have messed up our lives - for fantasies open the doors only to illusions, not Truth. Thus, Illusions, and not Truth, come to govern our lives. Years ago Joni Mitchell wrote a haunting song about illusions: Both Sides Now. In it she speaks about how love's illusions and life's illusions seem to have kept her from living her truth. If one were to listen closely to not so guarded conversations at social events or even eavesdrop on conversations between friends, it would become abundantly clear, and profoundly sad, that sex, and/or making love, is filled with illusions. And we're all guilty of perpetrating and perpetuating them into eternity.

In the first place, love making isn't simply about fornication. No matter how we say "it," "it" isn't simply just about procreation. Nor is it simply about the rush we get while serving our infatuation to the fullest, either. And it certainly isn't something only men like to do. It's something we all ARE. No, not f---ed up. Lovers. Each of us is created in the image and likeness of God - a loving God - one who knows nothing but loving. For that is what God simply, perfectly, and infinitely Is. That being the case, then, our only real purpose in life, and the only things, therefore, that will fulfill us, are acts of making love. Or, if it makes you feel better, acts of creating love.

I want to share a story about how I came to appreciate even more the difference between making love, in any reference you wish to make of it, and being loving. It's a story about two pigeons. "Pigeons?" you say. "You really have gone mad!" No, quite the contrary. I merely have been given the extraordinary opportunity to witness, in the most tender and innocent way, the act of being a lover... a real lover. In a real sense it is a story about God loving through all, and it was shown to me stripped from the personal nature of my own life, so I could see it with a bit more objectivity than otherwise would be the case.

A few months ago I went on a photo trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I had longed for that trip for over a year, for I have often had the good fortune to collaborate with these marvelously open and celebratory Mexican people in creating some stunning photographic imagery. My experience, particularly with those financially less fortunate, let us say, has been nothing but deep connectedness; a merging of souls at the most profound level. The resulting photographs have blessedly matched the sensitive exchange of loving energy that etches their images indelibly on the lining of my heart. It is with that anticipation that I traveled to San Miguel, and I was not disappointed.

One day, as I approached the end of this awe-inspiring photographic adventure, I was moved to give myself a treat at a special place for lunch. Contrary to the ecstasy I felt during the overwhelming majority of the collaborative ventures with my camera in hand, I was feeling low after having just photographed a lovely teenage school girl, a portrait of seeming innocence, who immediately flung out her open palm on the end of her arm like a giant bullfrog's tongue snapping out to catch a passing fly, expecting me to pay her.

As fate would have it, deep in this self-created malaise, I looked up to get my bearings and found myself right in front of the restaurant I had in mind: La Capilla, the chapel. As I passed from the well-swept cobblestone street through the finely chiseled stone entry, I was overwhelmed at the sight: a two story winding staircase, elegantly fastened to the side of the largest cathedral in town, entwined with the greenest ivy I've ever seen. The stone walls were fashioned in the same manner as the entry and made for a startling demonstration of strength and power. God seemed to be everywhere present.

As I headed toward the stairs I noticed the large room off to the right, adorned in row after row, basket after basket, of festively wrapped goodies: biscochitos, jams and jellies, and fancy chocolates, each a necessary evil for those who occasioned La Capilla. I arranged to purchase several jars of exotic home made jam: strawberry-basil, pineapple-raspberry, blueberry and peach, pear and cranberry, and another I can't recall, as it has long since passed through my digestive system. It must be a Pisces thing: I can't buy just one - one jar of jam or only one plant - to save my life. I arranged to have these treats wrapped for travel while I had lunch, and the young, dark eyed woman with an infectious smile began the task immediately.

I was so taken by the contrast of this image with my most recent photographic encounter that I asked if I might create the young lady's photo. Long ago I began a series of this kind, using the inexpensive throw-away cameras to photograph people with whom I felt some special bond. She quickly agreed, and I created our picture, beckoning her close enough so I could get both of us in the frame within an arm's length; hence the name of the series: Within An Arm's Length.

Immediately I began to feel my energy shift with this newfound imagery feeding my soul, and was completely uplifted by the time I climbed the winding staircase to bask in the view of the Jardin nestled in the surrounding architecture and landscape, embraced by the sound of tinkling wind chimes and babbling waterfall. A brilliant blue sky filled with billowy white clouds completed the picture of Heaven on Earth: a perfect setting for lunching on life's real gifts.

It was about 1:30 PM and yet I was the only one there to enjoy this luxury. It perplexed me for a moment, until I asked the waiter if lunch was indeed being served. He caught my ignorance in the matter and simply indicated that it would be awhile before others would be joining me. He was absolutely correct; the waiter and I shared this time and space for more than an hour with no one but each other. After ordering a quail salad, a continental style fish dish, and a glass of sauvignon blanc, I settled in to read a book by Joel Goldsmith, a metaphysician and spiritual writer who extends Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science healing beyond that norm by some distance.

As I turned the pages to my bookmark, I heard an inner prompting to look over my left shoulder to the stone ledge that separated the two-story, Spanish-tiled roof line from the furniture-filled rooms in the antique store below. Just as I looked over, two pigeons landed near one another and strutted along the ledge this way and that, not particularly paying attention to one another. I watched for a moment and noticed that one was beginning to approach the other, and I intuitively knew I was about to witness "the act." Seemingly without notice, one bird leaped onto the backside of the other, did his thing in a flash, and leapt back off to the ledge. In a few seconds, he repeated "the act" in precisely the same fashion. I was tickled by this version of modern man and woman in an-after-the-marriage clinch. "Slam, bang, thank you, Ma'am," as the all too familiar chauvinistic expression goes. Just like that: land, do it, it's done and over with.

After privately thanking these lovely creatures for allowing me to participate vicariously in their clinches, I returned to my book and chilled glass of wine, dripping with dew cast by the now warm, humid day on the ice-cold goblet. Neither my reading nor wine-sipping lasted very long, however. Just as I had been prompted the last time, I found myself returning to what I had decided was to be some kind of lesson for me. For nearly 45 minutes these two beautiful creatures billed and cooed, strutted around one another, brushed against one another, poked here and there, gently nudging under the wings, around the neck, beak to beak. It was the most extraordinary display of "after play" I have ever witnessed, despite my own preference for similar comforting under such conditions.

I notice that a few other diners had entered and they seem to glow in the wake of the beauty I had witnessed. As I prepare to leave, a man and woman at the next table catch my eye and we exchange a brief greeting. I am walking on a cloud and want to share this story with anyone who would listen, but decide to savor the occasion privately instead, filling my soul to overflowing with joy.

The purpose of all this? Well, it could be to illustrate that making love isn't simply fornication at all, although making love certainly could include that. Making love is really about what happens between such episodes.

On another level, this marvelous display of being lovers depicted what loving is all about, while at the same time putting the sex act into a wholesome perspective. Sex is but a natural act between lovers, an act not unlike pecking at food, flying from one ledge to another, like dropping a load of feces on someone's Easter bonnet in the bowels of the Jardin below. But it also is a necessary act, one that comes with simply being an animal or spiritual being, either one. It is not something to withhold or talk down about. It simply is - like life itself. And when we make nothing more of it than that, it flourishes as a normal, even enjoyable, part of living. When embraced as a wonderful gift of love, and created in the true sense of collaboration - fully giving and fully receiving - where two people give all they have to it, letting all expectations and restraints flee out of the relational window, making love in the larger sense becomes a sacred act, one that fulfills on the deepest level. Under these conditions, even the most simple love making transforms into Eros, God's ultimate example of Oneness between two lovers.

In this context, the sex act itself becomes simply one more sacred demonstration of making love, of being a lover, just like making dinner for another, or picking up the other's laundry at the dry cleaners, hugging at the ankles and knees at bedtime, or catching one another's loving glance when passing the raspberry jam over brunch in front of a glowing fire on a frosty weekend morning. It is the Eros in the human heart that transforms fucking into Fucking, the sacred act of making or creating love, moment by moment, day by day.

The billing and cooing? That is the story of stroking one another throughout life's moments, of caring enough about another to invest one's unbridled love with him or her. It is lavishing love on another for their benefit, because it's important to be lavished upon, at the very least because it says one is worthy of such treatment. But such treatment also rewards, in fact, greatly nourishes, the giver as well. For when we are allowed, privileged - whatever - to give love in such dimensions, especially when we are allowed to lavish love on another, we are fulfilled in a most profound manner. As the images of God we are, in times of such lavishness we become Gods in our own right.

This is what it means to be a lover, a lover of the first order - making love all day long. It's no wonder that God wanted this job! But God is not selfish that way. God made us in Its image so we, too, could experience Eros in its deepest meaning. So we, too, could lavish and be lavished upon. So we could, at last, be lovers of the first order. When we are, we, and thus our lives, become nothing but Eros. If we'd only get out of our own way and stop taking ourselves so seriously. And forget most everything our parents taught us about making love.

© Jim Young, 2006

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Young, who exercised an early retirement option to pursue his art and spiritual interests, is a published, award-winning writer, poet and documentary/fine art photographer who has received grants and gifts for support of his art, some of which is found in institutional and private collections nationally. His photographic images are exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad. Dr. Young is a graduate of the ecumenical School for Spiritual Directors at the Pecos Benedictine Monastery (NM), and served as the monastery’s first lay director of public relations and fund-raising, where he initiated an extensive religious arts program. Basically a metaphysician who labels himself as an orthodox eclectic, he also has availed himself of numerous holistic healing intensive programs and is a Reiki, Christian Science and Holographic Repatterning practitioner in addition to serving as a spiritual director. The author of a dozen spiritual manuscripts, he is a lifetime student of spirituality and its implications for reframing life’s journey, especially from one of separation and the pain separation engenders, to one of Oneness, and the inner joy and peace that infills from this perspective. Dr. Young is a gifted inspirational speaker who often uses life’s parables to convey spiritual meaning, and inspires others to look within for the Truth that can transcend the superficial.

Jim has just published three books in a new "My Spiritual Awareness" series: The Creation Spirit; A Labor of Love; and Keys to the Door of Truth. All are available through his personal website, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite bookstore. Visit him online at http://creationspirit.net, or email him at dimitrios@creationspirit.net.