For a variety of reasons, I am very, very late with this issue of Words of Caring. I hope you can forgive me.

To tell you the truth, this article got away from me and became two installments since it is now too large to be sent simply as one newsletter. Secondly, I am not at all sure I want to send you this article.

I am not sure because, on the one hand, this article reveals something of that which is, to me, the most important subject I have ever attempted (or ever will attempt) to write to you. That's the good news. The bad news (at least for me) is that this article, I believe, marks the beginning of the end.

The good news is even not necessarily so good, or perhaps so easy. It is not because the article is not worthwhile, it is; but because the subject I have picked, and must write to you about, is so very difficult to portray and, thus, is so easily misunderstood. I'm not sure that you will understand what I have written here. I'm not even sure that I understand it; but it is with me, and in me, and I simply must share it somehow with you.

In this article, I am looking back at many other articles that I have written to you. And I am looking at what has happened and is happening, and what I have done and am doing with my boys, my family and myself since coming to this place with you some five years ago.

I have called this article, "The True, True Love," (the lack of images in this article is intentional for, this time, I do not want to distract from the text) and in it I have redefined what I now know true love to be from that which I thought it was before. Admittedly, I have written you much of late concerning this subject, but not like this.

I have become surprised by true love. I once thought that love was something of me, something that I generate, something that I own, and from my possession, something that I give.

What I have found, however, is that true love is in me, but not simply of or from me. I can participate in it and I can choose to give it, but I do not generate true love solely of myself. This is because I do not own true love. Rather, true love beckons me, calls me to it and, in the most real sense, possesses me fully in its enduring embrace. It is then from this place, in genuine communion with true love, that true love flows outward transparently from me.

And despite the traditional syntax used here, true love is not at all a thing. True love is not overtly visible, but is mysteriously existent and flowing, an ephemeral essence, not just alive, but which is truly and totally life itself.

I can say no more of it here, but will allow you to read for yourself my meager and totally insufficient words.

As I say, I am, in this article, looking back, looking back not only, or even importantly, at a million mistakes made, but at the huge and utter, hideous darkness that used to encompass all of my life. I was not wholly without love, but I was without understanding even to see love, and fully without the way or the key to enter it.

My life is being transformed; and light, even if but a flicker, is open now before me and in me. True love has awakened at long last in my heart.

I can't even begin to express to you the rampant flow of tears that accompanies this most exquisite and living realization. I was dead, but now am poorly, but vitally beginning to be alive in the tender bosom of true love.

I write this article to you in prayer that it will awaken also you who were or are like me; to those who were, to rejoice in the happiness of one who now also shares; to those who as yet still are, to hunger and search at all cost and with all diligence for that which is within you and that you truly must find – True Love.

I will explain more to you in the next installment, which I hope to send soon, but for now… Enjoy!

-- John Borland --


The True, True Love
By John Borland

In the December 2001 issue of Words of Caring (Volume 2, Number 5), I wrote to you an article entitled, “True Love.” In this article, I expressed my difficulties with finding the best way to raise my children amid differing teachings, opinions, and advice. I ended up, in the article, developing my own definition of True Love as my measure for how to deal rightly with my kids.

This article has come back to my attention in that, although Joshua is still growing up under my roof, I am reaching a stage where I am beginning to look back and take stock for how I have raised my boys, and how things are turning out with them.

I look back at this article, "True Love," now almost four years later, and I find it interesting. In the article, I express my definition of true love across several segments and aspects, which altogether are meant to portray an understanding. By the end of the article, my definition of true love is presented as total and complete. The definition put forward speaks of being honest with my children, of speaking always the truth to them, of having respect for my children, of giving of myself to my kids, of my responsibility to them as a parent, of showing mercy, and of teaching trust by showing trust.

Let me say that this definition is not wrong; in fact, it is quite correct in its way. But I look at the definition now, and it is curious to me, almost distressing in a sense. I say this because this definition of true love speaks to me now in a much different way than it did when I wrote it.

As I say, this definition of true love is not wrong, but as a definition of true love, I now see it is also not correct.

Now, you might say that I have contradicted myself. Above I said this definition of true love is quite correct, and now I am saying it is not correct. So, you might ask, which is it? Is this definition of true love correct or not?

Well, I think the definition is correct, and it is very much in keeping with what I learned from the Parent Seminar at that time when I was first taking it. But, as I say above, this definition is only correct "in its way."

Looking at it now, this definition of true love is, to me, rather cold and formulated. It speaks of certain aspects and qualities that are, in essence, a part of true love, but it does so in a distant and mechanical fashion. In fact, as I read through the various pieces of this definition, apart from the use of the phrase, "True Love," as the term being defined, I cannot find the word "love" anywhere in it.

This definition is correct as formula, but it lacks the real feelings and deep caring – the true, inner nature – that are so needed to complete it. Therefore, as a full and final definition of true love, this particular definition is not correct.

And yet, I wrote this article very carefully, and I very much believed in this definition when I wrote it. I believed it very much was complete, and that there was nothing substantial to add.

But then, this is where I was when I wrote the article. As much as my definition of true love was rather formulated and mechanical, I also was rather formulated and mechanical. I was, at that time (and I must admit am still in many ways), just learning to really deal and join with the intimate interactions which consummate a relationship, and the deep feelings locked within me that were continuing to emerge.

Insofar as my definition of true love was correct, but somehow distant, I too am, after a fashion correct, but effectively distant (much less so than I was, but still) with regard to sociability and personal interaction. There is much tender, wonderful, loving understanding held within me (none of you, not even my wife, have any idea really) that falls short in actual practice because of my awkwardness and shy reserve. I am told I can speak and write beautifully of love and relationship, but I know also, and all too well, that my real life efforts pale as compared to the words and remain, somehow, so difficult to overcome to full expression – the end result of a difficult, fearful and repressed childhood.

But I believed in this definition of true love, and I followed it; and I followed the Parent Seminar in what it said, of understanding choices and consequences, of developing better attitudes and expectations, of influencing outcomes by changing our reactions, of balancing the inner aspects which comprise us and of moving well on the continuum. And, as I learned, I raised my stepson, Troy, by these understandings, means, and methods that were already familiar to me, but also all so new.

I used these concepts and tools with him, and I wasn't wrong, and the Parent Seminar was not wrong. But, just as I look back now nearly four years later to realize that my supposedly complete definition of true love was not fully correct, I realize now that my use then of the teachings of the Parent Seminar, and I myself at that time, were also not full and correct.

I raised Troy as best I could by these understandings, and I struggled so hard with him to grow, achieve, and together become. Still, however, my actions with Troy were more formula and mechanism than comfortable relationship. We continued together haltingly and stilted, formal and rather distant.

Somehow, with Troy, I could never quite come to a loving, embracing environment, largely because I was still so focused on the strategy. For reasons I still don't fully understand, it was very difficult (and remains so to this day) for me to simply place the person above the outcomes, and see Troy over what Troy does.

Understand though, that even in where I was, and Troy was with me, what we did and have done together, even if it was incomplete, was not wrong; and it was, and is, so much better than anything we had or did before. I have chronicled much of our relationship in those days openly across the pages of Words of Caring, and you have all had the opportunity to read of it.

I do not apologize for what I did and have come to with Troy, for I was then, and am now, the only person I could be, and I did and have done all that I possibly could. But I, somehow, cannot help but weep when I look at Troy's and my time together against what I share now with Troy's brother, Joshua.

I guess the easiest way to portray this difference is that the relationship I have with Joshua is not about concepts, or strategies, or expectations, or outcomes; it is very much about us.

Somehow, with Joshua it has been so different. I have never held what Joshua does above who Joshua is. With Josh it has been all about a loving environment, and it has been, relatively speaking, easy to get to this.

Josh and I have been connected since the first day when I helped deliver him and held him in the hospital. We spend much time together, we do and talk together, and we share. We are, indeed, father and son, but more so, and much more importantly, we are also really good friends.

I have definite desires that I would like for Joshua to come to, and expectations that he is to meet, and things don’t always go so smoothly with us; but none of these developments or situations has ever overridden Joshua and I together as persons, and the fact that we genuinely love each other.

At this juncture, I must come back to Troy, for I fear that it may appear as though I am slighting Troy, or setting Joshua above him. But the Lord knows that this is not so.

To be sure, as I have pointed out in other articles in Words of Caring, Troy and Joshua are very different individuals, and we have shared very different lives together. Troy and Josh, surprisingly (to me at least), share characteristics that are very similar, but there is a very different makeup and aligning of those characteristics to the forming of their individual personalities and attitudes. Further, we have shared very different experiences in coming to and being together, and my relationship with each of them has been different. But you must know that, in my heart, everything I have now with Joshua is what I wanted so very badly to have with Troy.

Before I ever knew Joshua and my relationship with him, I wanted all of this for and with Troy. Any of you who have read my articles know how I have worked, and how terribly I have ached inside, to have with Troy what I have now with Josh.

So why are things different?

Aside from the differences in them (and these cannot be overstated), there has been also a dramatic difference come over me. There is so much I could say to describe this change, but I think the easiest way to illustrate it is to again point back to the article, "True Love."

Everything that "True Love" says, and everything I have said here about it, is who I was and too much still am with Troy. I built strategy rather than environment; I saw outcomes rather than my boy; I was concept rather than reality; and I existed in hope much more than actuality, waiting so much, and so long for us just to be.

I really, really did not want it to be this way, and I beat myself literally to pieces working to make myself somehow otherwise; but this is how it was with us, and this is what it became, because this is who Troy and I were together, and the only persons we then could be.

But let's now look at the two-part article I wrote to you entitled, "Freedom of Choice" (Words of Caring, November/December 2003, Volume 4, Number 6 and Words of Caring, January/February 2004, Volume 5, Number 1).

As an article, "Freedom of Choice" is also not perfect, but it is, I must say, far, far closer to it, and this article represents much more who I am with Joshua.

It is interesting for me to compare the two articles. "Freedom of Choice" is, to me, much more rich, complete, and intimate a work than is "True Love." "True Love" was written largely as my ideal. When I wrote "True Love" I had really not come near to realizing the definition I wrote of, but rather hoped that some day I would. "Freedom of Choice," on the other hand, is to a much greater extent written from my actual experience. There really isn't anything in this article that I have not practiced with Josh and strived very hard in the latter years to practice with Troy.

And the real difference between these two articles, and with me now as compared to then… is Love.

While the first article is entitled, "True Love," it is really the second article, "Freedom of Choice," that more truly speaks of, describes, and celebrates true love. I know now that it is love that Troy and I always longed for (even if we didn’t know it), and it is love that Joshua and I share.

For you see dear readers, dear parents and friends, it may still be hard to see in me, for with me it is special and treasured, and so I am careful and not flamboyant with it, lest I ignorantly demean and trample it (and because I am still very new to and still forming in what I have found); but in between writing "True Love" and "Freedom of Choice," in between my first halting days with Troy and my every day with Josh, in between then and now, I have truly found love.
To be continued…

YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER!

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