A love story.

Move aside warm, fuzzy, and butterflies -- there's a new feeling in town.

...Or just share the space. That's cool, too.

A couple of days ago, I visited the Giant Redwoods of Muir Woods National Park. It's a bit cheesy, but I have had this strange connection with those gigantic trees since the first grade. I wasn't even in America yet, but I have always just wanted to stand next to one to see how I would compare. I just couldn't believe anything could be of that scale and of that age.

Immediately upon entering, I soaked in the greatness that surrounded me. I felt the centuries of existence that led up to that moment. I felt like the child that I am trying to count the ridges that went on forever. As my senses began to fail me, God's marvelous creation began to overwhelm me and instead of trying to understand how everything worked, I just breathed it all in thus filling me with more life. Even my imagination brought things to life! I couldn't help but picture dinosaurs weave clumsily through these reddish tree trunks; I saw extinct birds flying over the wilderness and nesting high above the branches where no one can find them and their babies. I marveled at how this blanket of green sprawled throughout the coast of what is now California continues to unconditionally give life to everything around it since the beginning of time. I also wondered how many more people like me felt and thought these things while being in the same place. In the hippiest, and most tree-hugging way I can put it, I felt so connected to everything and everyone of the past and even the future.

It wasn't a magical stroll through the park or anything, but there was something inexplicably divine about what I experienced while being in silence and being significantly small in comparison to the trees whose rings humbly tell the story of this planet's movement through time.

Then it hit me. That remarkable, sublime, and profound experience is love. The real and raw kind of love that settles in after the butterflies and the warm fuzzy feelings fade. It's that one enduring thing that perpetually and unconditionally gives life. It's that thing! It's that same particular something that fills my heart and soul when I'm at Mass (this love story needs its own post); when I'm in Eucharistic Adoration and in the physical presence of He who made everything, He who is the source of our lives, of our dreams, of our everything. I don't know what else to tell you other than...guys, my soul felt its worth and it was that: Unconditional love. My soul recognized its essence and it's love. My senses reminded my body of its similar mark: Borne out of love -- I am to love and be loved in return.

And without fully understanding or even being able to perfectly explain (and I'm glad this is an impossible task) what love is, I will boldly make the claim that I know love. The way I know a person. The way I know those giant redwoods. The way I know a beloved. The way I know myself. The way I know how crazy, inexplicable things happen. Love just is.

Next time you and I look for the warm, the fuzzies, the butterflies, and the big works that make us feel grand, simply walk back through the wilderness and find the quiet, the subtle whispers, the grandness of everything else around you. Especially of your beloved in their pure state of simply being. Walk in the midst of greatness with total and joyful acknowledgement of your smallness. Then, and I feel that only then, can you and I feel the worth of our soul, the purpose of our humanity -- the realness of love. There's only one kind, and it's this.

+JMJ+