“I am remembering love.” Ah! The last line of a poem titled “Lyric: I am Looking at Music” written by Pinkie Gordon Lane. When I first heard it, I was about sixteen years old. Those words were spoken by a character in what would become – and remain – my favorite romantic movie, “Love Jones,” directed by Theodore Witcher. Every aspect of the movie is phenomenal: the story, directing, cinematography, acting, soundtrack, setting, everything. After watching it, I thought, “I want to live in Chicago.” With each Black cultural reference and vernacular aesthetic that was portrayed, I grew excited about the life that I was being encouraged to live when I became an adult. The options presented within the moving depictions of Black adult-educated-cultured-joyous life, that I knew were real and existed, were punctuated emphatically with the line “I am remembering love.” 

What. Is. Love. What is love? Tomes have been dedicated to the word “love.” Ask what the word “love” means and you will hear myriad definitions -- some contradictory – see brows furrow or smiles permeate faces as persons attempt to tackle the complexity of the four-letter word. L.O.V.E. Here is my effort: God is love (1 John 4:8). When we love; when we do love, we are participating in a transcendental experience. Words feebly articulate the verb love. My second effort: love is more than a feeling or an experience. It is a state of being (God is) and an invitation to act (John 14: 21, 23). By doing love, we grow closer to the One who is love. If we want to participate in the doing of real, genuine, appropriate, and God-like love, we have to accept the initial offer of love, Jesus Christ. 

My efforts to explain love are how “I am remembering love.”