Andrea Buchanan - Live and Let Love: Notes from Extraordinary Women on the Layers, the Laughter, and the Litter of Love

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First Gallery Books hardcover edition February 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Live and let love: notes from extraordinary women on the layers, the laughter, and the litter of love / edited and with an introduction by Andrea Buchanan.First Gallery Books harcover ed.
p. cm.
1. LoveReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Man-woman relationships. 3. Self-realization in women. 4. Spiritual life. I. Buchanan, Andrea.
BV4639.L58 2011

306.70922dc22 2010042668

ISBN 978-1-4391-9135-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-9136-1 (ebook)

For my parents, Buck and Sue, fifty-nine years and counting

LIVE and LET LOVE

T here is nothing more universal than love. Its what we desire to feel, adore to bestow, fight to achieve, and grieve when its gone. Some would say love is the reason we are here... to give and receive it.

Since the dawn of humankind, love has been studied, pondered, pontificated and written about by scholars and sages of antiquity. From Aristotle to Austen to Ephron, love unadorned and unrequited has been in style. The Holy Bible is one of the oldest texts to talk about love and can likely be credited with starting the infinite fad: love is essential to living a faithful life. One passage I find particularly striking in its definition of love and its meaning was written by the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians:13.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.

I first started to understand that passage when I was fourteen years old. Saint Paul imparted to me that even with exalted powers, and surrounded by gifts, without love everything else is meaningless. I grew up in Texas and I had found God in a small, nondenominational Bible church. No one else in my family went to church but me. I was in search of meaning and had deep questions about faith, but I also had a crush on a boy, who would become my high school sweetheart. He was fifteen, had a car, and I was allowed to ride in it with him as long as I went to church and came straight home. So I did, religiously, to every Sunday service (morning and night) and Wednesday evenings for Bible Study. I would hold Bens hand on our car rides, and during the Sunday youth group pizza parties. Early on in this phase, I memorized I Corinthians: 13, and would recite it to myself. I was falling in love for the first time and I felt that the words in Corinthians had been written just for me. It was a magical time and I can still recall the way I felt when I was around Ben like it was yesterday. It was so new, so innocent and pure. Whether we were driving with the windows down on a hot Texas summer night, or enjoying a first kiss under the bleachers after a Friday night football game, or discovering one another under the blankets on a van ride to Colorado, falling in love for the first time was a religious experience.

Six years and a couple of painful breakups later, Ben and I had moved on to different colleges and other relationships. God, as defined by the Church, became less important to me. Love, on the other hand, was still a supremely high priority. During this time, I embarked upon what would become a protracted journey through bridesmaids hell, where love hides, usually under yards upon yards of taffeta. Participating in the first wedding where I had to buy my own dress and matching shoes, I took my place next to the other eight best friends and bridesmaids, and I had an unexpected pang of beautiful memories and love lost when the preacher read from Corinthians. He also took the opportunity to invite anyone who had not been saved in his captive audience to come up and accept Jesus Christ as their saviour before the groom kissed the bride. I like a good two for one sale, but even I thought it was a bit cheap. About that time, I saw my father, who is a striking six foot one and easily agitated, stand up and walk out of the church to go have a smoke, while my beautiful mother stayed patiently in her seat. He was an agnostic, bordering on atheist, and unsavable, and she would never leave before the curtain call. After a few lost souls found their salvation as I did some knee bends to keep from fainting, the groom kissed the bride, the preacher read the famous verse, and I quietly wept, mourning the passing of my youthful first love, and wishing that one day I might have a wedding, without taffeta, but certainly with Corinthians.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

While I no longer consider myself a practicing Christian, I consider biblical teachings along with philosophical texts from antiquitys timeless studies of love as more of an open-ended question than an absolute fact, and I highly value them as I attempt to understand loves layers and complexities. With love there is no absolute. There are some very smart people out there who have studied this topic extensively. Im certainly not a scholar of love, with minimal courses in philosophy at the University of North Texas under my belt. My understanding of love comes from the school of hard knocks. I speak from my own experiences of my heart opening and shattering from love fulfilled and unrequited, as do my fellow storytellers in this book.

However, for a moment Ill put my scholarly shortcomings aside to offer a quick refresher. The English etymology of the word love derives from the Germanic form of the Sanskrit lubhwhich means desire. And while desire certainly has something to do with feelings that seem like love, desire alone is not love. As we all know, there are so many more forms of love than just all-out-crazy-for-you lust. But lust can be a lot of funand sometimes dangerous, which can just add to the rush. Case in point: my college crush, who Ill call John. We were both sophomores when we met. He was a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brother and I was an honorary little sister to the fraternity. He and I loved to dance, and somehow our grooves fit. Every time a song from the band New Order would come on at a party, we would find one another and clear the floor. Our connection was rhythmically deep, and I was madly in lust. John was a dangerous bad boy with a lot of hard edges, and an incredibly soft spirit. He was Patrick Swayze in