Love has no agenda …

For many of us, a vow of celibacy — a promise not to enter into marriage or engage in sexual intercourse — is unfathomable.

During the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther in 1517, reformers argued that requiring a vow of celibacy from a priest was contrary to biblical teaching, a degradation of marriage and a reason for the widespread sexual misconduct within the clergy at the time.

Yet some would stand back today and suggest that all single people vow chastity! Granted, that goes down easier — provided you’re able to maintain hopes of getting married (despite the odds for your gender and age). But how realistic is it?

A public health report issued in 2007 concluded (after a long list of statistics), “Almost all Americans have sex before marrying.” And lest you be intimidated by those with a holier than thou attitude, they were included in the study.

I am married now, but it would be dishonest and unkind to dismiss from my mind what it was like to be single. A whopping 40 percent of our adult population is single. On average, we now spend half of our adult lives outside of marriage. And some of us die single.… More

Start today. And if you mess up, start again before tomorrow. You get to try again until you get it just right; you get to learn until you know it all. Then, I suppose you get to die happy or live in nirvana or be transported into the heavens.

Much of life is about starting over. It’s about falling down and learning from it, getting up and starting again. And if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, just watch a little baby do it. Better yet, let the baby wrap his little fingers around yours and help him learn to walk.

Look into his twinkling eyes and see if you don’t get a new perspective on resilience — joy in the stumbling and peace in the falling. There might be some cries and screams, but they won’t keep him down. With a little coaxing, I bet you can turn the cries into smiles and laughter, and find yourself gleeful.

Why not encourage yourself? Believe in yourself? Show kindness and understanding to yourself?

If you don’t do that, chances are you don’t feel like showing other adults kindness, either. But that’s just because you lost sight of the baby, or the goodness, in you and in them.… More

When you’re free to be you, you can have a genuine connection. Apart from that freedom, you don’t really know what you have, or what the potential is. … More

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