Alexandra Stoddard - Living in Love

ALEXANDRA STODDARD

To Peter

Here is someone at once so like you that you have come home, and yet so different he opens a thousand windows on the universe.

MICHAEL DRURY

Dear Peter,

I believe my eternal commitment to you began when we first met in 1954. Now I experience all love through the prism of ours. We all have access to the boundless energy force that is love. When we tap into this divine gift, you are me and I am you. We complete each other. Whats missing in my life, you make up for. Im whole because of you. I love you completely and love you just as you are because you bring me variety and fresh ideas; you stimulate me, and I am inspired by your energy. Your fertile imagination helps me maintain a youthful spirit. Just as dancing replenishes psychic energy, the more loving I become, the more lovable I am. And I adore being loved by you. My heart skips a beat when I think of you, and sometimes when I go for a walk I end up skipping. Your active mind and gentle decorum bring me lyrical joy and often oceanic feelings where I continuously rediscover myself.

The love I feel for life is the flame in my heart. Whenever I aim my energy in the direction of loving you, I am loving the spark inside me and Im all keyed up with pleasure. Our meeting place is love and life itself is the aphrodisiac. There is no magic to keeping our love alive, no better aphrodisiac than our loving energy. Aphrodisiac comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Love of family, love of friends, love of art, love of music, love of learning are all aphrodisiacs. A piece of Godiva chocolate is an aphrodisiac. An oval bar of pure white almond soap is an aphrodisiac. Your tenderness toward your children is an aphrodisiac. Your love of nature is an aphrodisiac. The love of color is an aphrodisiac. A beautiful day is an aphrodisiac. Your marvelous sense of humor is an aphrodisiac. We can arouse and intensify all our desires when were loving and focusing on what is beautiful. The more we love life the more radiant and lovable we become. You are alive in my consciousness and I can actually feel my invisible, nonphysical loving energy day and night, whenever I am still, and able to connect to my nobler self.

If I ever let you down, in whatever ways, I will first be letting myself down. I have an unquestionable belief in our ability to laser-focus our sensibilities and innate talents for living in love and releasing our full potency. If we have an emotional excess, let it be tilted toward love. I have an inescapable urge to connect the eons of time and space that separate us and bring us together with clarity and a charitable heart. Id love to ease a burden, wipe away a tear and, through the pure energy of love, be a part of your life, merging beatitudes, where we are vehicles of love, communicating grace, awakening natural joys in you, and opening up supernatural powers of celestial reverie, quenching your thirst when you need love. Our flesh and soul are one, and your laughing eyes and smile are sacred. Were carrying so much love were able to conjure up a paradise right here.

And because we are solid in an abundance of love and mutual support, were both free to love the world and all those loving people we know and meet from around the globe on this amazingly wondrous adventure. I entrust my life to love, believing in its powerful gift of grace and capacity for joy. All we have to do is trust life and try not to interfere.

Our consciousness of love is ageless, gender free, and eternal. Everything I have ever loved fuels the fire of passion and heats the pure blood flowing through my veins. Im lifted up and swept away into a place that is sweet-smelling, pure, and intoxicating. Im reminded of sucking honeysuckle as a child, or making grape jelly after picking the plumpest, juiciest grapes from the arbor. Im united with a host of loving people.

We live in chapters, as best we can, trying to learn from our divine nature. Only in our soulful, tranquil moments can we sort through the noise and confusion of current events and move into a timeless perspective, where were able to interpret a bigger view of truth, in the quiescence of our private sanctuary. No one judges us harshly as we sort out our own needs and those of others, figuring out what to do, who to love and what to hope for, adjusting to the changing conditions of life, and seeking to alter favorably our patterns and conditioning so we become less shortsighted, less self-destructive, less apathetic, dogmatic, and limiting.

In these times of reflection, I want to become more inquisitive, less self-righteous, more tolerant. Privately, quietly, we refract prejudices, breaking up and deflecting from a straight path as the bending of light waves when they pass from one medium into another. Here, I dont want to hold myself back, to feel restrained in my thinking, but allow myself to enter into the more generous, giving aspects of my nature. Quietly I want to use my ingenuity to direct and redirect my energies so I can recharge my spirit, becoming more energetic, curious, vivacious, and creative.

When we come together in complete privacy, we anticipate a dependability that becomes part of the indelible imprint these moments leave on us. The worrisome edginess of out there gives way to visceral feelings that metaphorically connect us in our imaginings with nuances of our soul. How we feel testifies to the ineffable spirit of love.

Life is ephemeral, fleeting. But in our short time on earth we have enough time to live in love, growing in grace and empathy. Ive felt over the years a wide range of emotions, as we all have, and my growing realization that we can beam our own heart and soul toward greater love becomes stronger every day. We are all, I am now convinced, generously endowed with potentiality for happiness. This is the story, our story, I want to tell.

Love,

On the afternoon Peter and I decided to join our lives together, we stood in front of a warm fire holding each other tightly. I cant remember whether our hug lasted for a few seconds or all afternoon. Whatever its duration, it was the beginning of a lifetime of living in love. That afternoon, Peter kissed my lips and looked at me with a grin reserved only for me and said, There will be a lot of surprises. I couldnt imagine what surprises he was referring to; I didnt give it a thought. Wed be together, wed work things out. All that mattered at that moment was the joy we were feeling because of our commitment.

Love is the sensory and emotional experience of union. Boundaries are dissolved in love and we form unities with people, places, and things.

Jay B. Rohrlich

As it turns out, living in love with Peter has indeed been full of surprises of every conceivable kind, starting with our unlikely decision to get married, orchestrated by my daughter Brooke, a four-year-old. Deciding to marry Peter was both an easy and an impossible choice to make. We had been good friends for more than twenty years. We had known each other and stayed in touch ever since his sister Bebe introduced us outside the tennis court where we had just finished a ladies doubles match. After the end of Peters second marriage and the breakup of my first marriage, we became a great source of comfort and pleasure for each other. We were good friends, but never anything more. One day, while Peter was playing with Brooke, who was enchanted by his company, she turned to him, threw her arms around his neck, and proposed, Peter Rabbit, why dont you come live with us? Ill have to ask your mother first, Peter said, surprising himself.