Intimacies (Paperback)

Is the Flame of Love Burning in Your Heart?
In its essence, every authentic love story is a pilgrimage-a journey toward God. True love is love trois-the lover, the beloved, and God. These three are so interrelated that, if anything goes wrong between any two, all three are affected. Every time we truly love, we unveil the face of God because "God is love" (1 John 4: 16), and everything becomes transformed. Love, which is, according to Jalaludin Rumi, "the alchemist's elixir: It makes the earth into a mine of meanings," is the fullness of life and the peace that make the world a better place to live. Thomas Kempis, in the context of spiritual life, wrote: "Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better in Heaven and earth; because love is born of God, and cannot rest but in God, above all things."
But, if it is so, why in the world do we find ourselves continuously dissatisfied with love, as we know it in everyday life? What is missing from our earthly love? Why do we look for love in the wrong places? Have we really tasted the fire of love that originates in God at the center of our being? What has happened to love?
This book, based on simple philosophical and theological realities, suggests answers to such questions and deepens the path to true intimacy. A book like this, which uses a poetic contemplative style, should be read meditatively and comprehensively-the way one listens to a great symphony or perceives a masterpiece in an art museum. A symphony, or a painting, or a book like this is more than just the total sum of the different notes, or colors, or words. Wonder of wonders One willrealize, then, that there is nothing more mysterious, but also more magical, than love; it is, indeed, the "philosopher's stone" that converts whatever it touches into a golden reality. Then, everything will start to make sense, for nothing-not even all the money in the world-can buy the strength and the happiness of a loving heart.