Sam Keen on Love

"When it comes to calculating
the power and reach of love,
the mind is a pedestrian
but the heart is a broad jumper."

"Love is not a spectator sport."
—Sam Keen

In honor of Valentine's Day, these are some of Sam Keen's insights about love from his book, To Love and Be Loved.

"When it comes to calculating the power and reach of love, the mind is a pedestrian but the heart is a broad jumper. The spirit leaps the chasm of despair in a single bound to entertain the possibility that love is a force that moves the cosmos, the energy that creates a marriage of hard rock and swirling water, that keeps the stars on their courses, that stirs me to procreate a child who, quite unknown to my dying self, will carry the imprint of my days into history.

Love is all this and more. And the nearer we get to it, the more we know we have come home. It is where we came from and return to, the before and after that we approach in our best moments. It is the source of life, the meeting place of our origin and destination. In those moments when love finds us, we lose one identity and gain another. We burst out of the dark cocoon of the ego and discover that we have grown wings."

Sam Keen holds an S.T.B. and a Th.M. from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Princeton University. He was for many years a consulting editor of Psychology Today and is the author of twelve previous books, including Faces of the Enemy, To a Dancing God, Hymns to an Unknown God, and the New York Times bestseller, Fire in the Belly.

Please visit Sam keen on the web at www.samkeen.com.

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