Much Love Monday

On Saturday, my friend told me about an exhibit on wood, the poster of which is posted below. She said it had all kinds of woodwork, and explanations of different barks - but also stories about wood, like Silverstein's The Giving Tree and the Chinese proverb: Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come...
So I thought if wood, that part of nature, can afford us shelter, firm branches for support, and all the colours their leaves bring with spring, are we not also to afford our friends such solid help?
What I am learning again (does that ever happen to you, when you learn something in life, but then, it turns out you keep having to relearn it in different contexts?) is that not everyone has the same understanding of friendship. Some people put concocted principles above their "friends": they do not love their friends unconditionally, but look at them askance sometimes, with that ersatz pity. They are like the pharisees of friendship.
And then, there are those few friends who are trustworthy, who live with their own imperfections so are more tolerant of others. They live in love, which is above that category of rules and measurements and keeping account. 
Sometimes it seems to me that any lesson that is not learned in love will have to be learned again: the lesson will be lost, until one comes to it with love. For example, if one teaches, it helps to be flexible about the syllabus if one is truly serving one's students. The element of spontaneity makes the class alive, and also shows the model of life; where there is meaning, the class will teach itself. Everything else is like going to the dentist.
If one looks at the world from a place of love, one wants to bring out the best in it. So that is what happens when people love each other, they become so beautiful.
For today's Much Love Monday, I love friendship, it heals and restores, comforts, teaches, blossoms and sings. And through it, we see that we only begin to live in and through each other.
In closing, here is a letter Ludwig van Beethoven wrote to his "Immortal Beloved":

Good morning, on July 7.

My thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved

I can only live wholly with you or not at all -

Be calm my life my all. Only by calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together. Oh continue to love me, never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

Ever thine

Ever mine

Ever ours.

Elements: frame; needlework.