All You Need Is LOVE

“All you need is love…hmm hmm hmm hmm all you need is love, love, love. Love is all you need.”

Do you hear the music? It’s only catchy phrases that stick. Parts of songs roll around in my head. Are they a sparked recollection, an overheard note, a jam packed mind oozing out, or as I’d like to think it’s just my free spiritedness not a subconscious reminder.

“If I only had a brain…” That’s the one that Dave hums.

Some months ago I was asked to give a talk in church about the Two Great Commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Matthew 22:37-39)

During the whole week I had to prepare my talk and the weeks after, that Beatles song kept playing in my head. It became my mantra for the New Year. I wanted and want to show more love, feel and recognize the love around me and let it more influence my choices.

Even though my January had many shades of blue, I warmed up my February in reds and pinks. I’ve been spending my days with my 85 year old friend Audrey. My thoughts of wanting to keep ourselves busy somehow rolled over to mean experimenting with crafts. Yes, I don’t make crafts, I experiment with them. I should start a blog about my craft wrecks like cake wrecks blog.
I could begin with this.

It's a card. I sewed the A and the little flower on a velvety cloth all ragged to look more homemade.  That idea certainly came across. I really did think about sending it but I love this person more than that. I have great ideas. I even imagine I can make them turn out. Like I plan some day to make a vintage wooden sign similar to the first picture but with a different saying.

Sometimes my crafts are descent enough to give to my understanding family, like my mom and now my young nieces and nephews because the crafts pass as something they may have tried to make. All in all my valentines were fun and it made winter seem shorter and it played into this year’s mantra of LOVE.

I’ll explain the pictures…we made hearts with wax paper and melted crayons. We also made heart shaped crayons . Sorry no pictures, but they were cute.  I added essential oils to them to smell nice; which made my sister believe they were soap. I wonder how long she scrubbed before she figured it out? And then the last one which makes me never want to cut out another heart in my entire life is 90 feet of heart garland. Thank you Audrey for taking naps and Dave for helping me string it!

So these are the thoughts from my talk I have been pondering on:

“We are created in the image of our Heavenly parents; we are God’s spirit children. Therefore, we have a vast capacity for love; it is part of our spiritual heritage.”

“Since the beginning of time, love has been the source of both the highest bliss and the heaviest burdens. At the heart of misery you will find the love of wrong things. And at the heart of joy, you will find the love of good things. And the greatest of all good things is God.”

“Because love is the great commandment, it ought to be at the center of all and everything we do in our own family, in our church callings, and in our livelihood. Love is the healing balm that repairs rifts in personal and family relationships. It is the bond that unites families, communities, and nations. Love is the power that initiates friendship, tolerance, civility, and respect. It is the source that overcomes divisiveness and hate. Love is the fire that warms our lives with unparalleled joy and divine hope, Love should be our walk and our talk.”
President Dieter Uchtdorf

He (Christ) loves those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. His love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked. We may not condone all things people do but we can love all people. We all yearn to experience love like this. Even when we make mistakes, we hope others will love us in spite of our shortcomings, even if we don’t deserve it.

There is no pain it cannot soften, no bitterness it cannot remove, and no hatred it cannot alter. Sophocles wrote: “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is LOVE.

(I took the first picture, Dave the second, and you gotta love the stranger who took the last one.)

So throw away your New Year’s resolutions. Pick a song and make it your yearly theme. This one will spice up your life. “Yo I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,…I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ha.”