Love is a rainbow of beautiful feelings. I suppose the rainbow colors also define those feelings within a relationship such as blue for dreaming, red for jealousy, yellow for happiness, green for growth or envy, and violet for loving and intimacy.
In 1956 Frank Sinatra took the baton, conducting a 60 piece orchestra playing music composed to accompany Tone Poems of Color, poems by Norman Sickel. The music pieces were composed by a number of people including Victor Young, Nelson Riddle, André Previn, Elmer Bernstein, and a former colleague, Alec Wilder. Among the 12 works, Green is the Lover, Black is my Friend, though it be bottomless, Gold is the Greedy, and Orange the Deceiver. They all seem to fit into our stories of love. And not just for the alternate life styles of those who use rainbows for identity.
I think feelings of love come from gratitude: We love a beautiful day and worship the day’s opulence, doing what we do with energy, purpose and love. We love when we feel compassion for those around us and want to help in whatever way we can. We love when we appreciate the efforts of others even when those efforts are not directed for us, but we recognize how they enhance our own lives through a better world. We love when we do things altruistically because we feel it’s what needs to be done, and its right to do it. And we love when those who return that love allow us to find lasting connectedness.
Love is a verb, something we do when we are considerate to others whether we like them or what they are doing.
We love music, yet not necessarily recognizing the colors the music may send out, reverberating in our spirit and allowing us to see or feel the transcendent within those notes and chords we hear. An orchestra of many players coming together as a single instrument sounding like an organ can reveal to us the transcendent; some say God, and captures our souls. Similarly our love-making can bring us to that same experience.
Aquinas suggests love is the grand motivation of desire; generator of compassion, charity, generosity, kindness, and friendship towards others; a level of awareness of the Universal in our lives.
Love’s madness and waywardness maintains a place of privilege and honor…at least in poetry.
Love in a relationship is something that enhances both, anything less, will not stand.
A Unitarian minister, John Corrado, in a journal sermon of 1987, “Loving Bastards, Bores and other Enemies,” suggests love is hard. Liking is easy. “I like…the warm sunshine …the feeling that comes from finishing a hard job that’s done well. I like playing Jazz…looking at pretty women…liking is easy. Loving takes work…time…and investment. Love is a process, not a feeling. Liking is a feeling.”
We all have a rainbow of feelings, but ‘love’, the process, is more, and always changing.
Our love is a kaleidoscope which others see, encourage, and celebrate…helping us to love ourselves more, as we love others more, surrounded in the colors.
Frank Sinatra Conducts, Tone Poems of Color:
© 2013 by Paul T. Jackson
