Love in this World and the Other:

The Dark Night of Love 

11th Annual Love in this World Men's Retreat

Ojai, CA

“Love gives you a sense of meaning, but it asks a price.  It will make you into the person you are called to be, but only if you endure its pains and allow it to empty you as much as it fills you.” 

--Thomas Moore

         
   Much has been said and written about the sweetness of love but we tend to push aside the bittersweet aspects and, ignore, deny, or flee from the purely bitter.  Yet what is a love that only basks in light and sweetness?  Surely it is incomplete and lacking depth.

            We want to acknowledge the darker sides of love, the aspects that give it richness, fullness, complexity, and mystery.  We believe that it is these aspects the soul longs for, as much as the riotous joy of amorous ecstasy.  And yet, how many of us, how many times, have baled out on a love that gets too sticky, difficult, or arduous?  We long for the sweet times but steer away from the parts of love that can really make our soul come alive and grow: the harrowing, disturbing, even ugly parts of love that take us through ordeals we would never chase after.  It is such ordeals in love that hone us, heal us, and transform us into the men we are destined to become.

In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill

only the best, none of the weak or deformed.

Don’t run away from this dying.

   Whoever is not killed for love is dead meat.

--Rumi