Thank you all for your comments about defining words of love. I will try to make several jars from the quotes you have sent.

     Today, a few quotes from my friend Valerie Frey Stone. These are  indirectly about love, but I still think they are perfect….

From Valerie Frey Stone:

(http://journeyleaf.typepad.com/journeyleaf/2012/05/tot-sniglets.html).

Tot Sniglets

Anybody remember comedian Rich Hall and his sniglets? His definition of a sniglet is "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should."  Here are some sniglets that are part of everyday life around our house yet somehow never made it into the dictionary...

Echophilia -- A tot's love of hooting loudly in any place that echoes.  The volume of the hoot is directly proportionate to how quiet it is but also how solumn and culturally important the space is.  Unfortunately, it is an inverse relationship.

Stainspreadery -- Your child's natural and recurrent mid-meal refl.ex to grab your shirt or rest a hand on your pants leg.  The reflex seems to increase with the stickiness, greasiness, and staining properties of the food.  Thus a child eating a soda cracker will not require physical contact with you, whereas a child dining on tacos and blueberry pie always will.

Stickaphilia -- The deep, abiding tot love of sticks.  The more unwieldy and pointy, the better.

Nuzzlelove--.  That's the need to put your nose and mouth against your child's skin for at least a count of five.  It is a cross between I-wish-you-well-all-your-life and the intake of the unique scent that reminds you deep down that this is your cub.

“Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three, and English only one. This is indicative of the poverty of awareness or emphasis that we give to that tremendously important realm of feeling. Eskimos have thirty words for snow, because it is a life-and-death matter to them to have exact information about the element they live with so intimately…..
     An Eskimo probably would die of clumsiness if he had only one word for snow; we are close to dying of loneliness because we only have one word for love....Imagine what richness would be expressed if one had a specific vocabulary for the love of one's father, another word for love of one's mother, yet another for one's camel (the Persians have this luxury), still another for one's lover, and another exclusively for the sunset! Our world would expand and gain clarity immeasurably if we had such tools."
                                  ~ Robert A Johnson, from The Fisher King & The Handless Maiden

  I suppose this is a follow-up to The Lover's Dictionary but a friend of mine gave me The Fisher King & Handless Maiden as a reading assignment and I was struck by these words about love. So I thought that- just for fun- I would give you all the task of defining your own words for love and submitting them. I will make jars for the winners.
     For me, this evening it is dirty skillet love- the willingness to do work for those you care about (such as clean up after supper) simply because it needs to be done. Dirty skillet love is harder than romance and perhaps more essential.

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.

The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick

to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,

pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty

and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples

glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,

the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.

You could say, Some years, there are apples.

“X. n. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x.” ~ David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary

   I have high expectations when I read any given book—if words are going to consume time I firmly believe they should be worthwhile. They should have a beginning, middle, and end; a discernible plot; and a redemptive point. I can appreciate that sometimes there is an inherent agreement between writer and reader that words are perishable (such any given text message on any given day), but published words should have a value.

    The Lover’s Dictionary (which is G rated) doesn't have a beginning, middle, or end; if there is a plot it is only of the mildest sort; and I puzzle over whether some of the phrases are redemptive points or just strings of clever words. If War and Peace is necessary, then The Lovers Dictionary is cute. But it's a really nice cute, and in its own way it is valuable, if only as a creative exercise.  

       And if The Lover’s Dictionary is a waste of time, it's only so for a short period- I think I finished it in 3 hours. I wished for more—much more, an actual story in the definitions to sink my mind or heart into. This book felt like a preamble—I read it wishing for the unabridged version, or perhaps the lover’s encyclopedia.

    The concept of a relationship described in an alphabet-like fashion is charming, thought provoking, and very clever. And it did remind me that there are so very many ways for us to love each other, and so many words in relationships that remain unsaid.....

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it’s trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.” ~ David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary

    What’s especially intriguing is that….it’s British.

    It’s hard to discern what an English land slug was doing in the middle of third creek greenway, but I am happy to know something of its nature.

    My favorite comment from yesterday’s post was someone musing on paper about whether or not it was poisonous because it was yellow and realizing that I probably should have thought about that part before I picked it up.

   If you haven’t read The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, you might consider doing so. Its one of those sorts of books that reminds you that the infinite universe is contained in the smallest of objects. Everytime I have a cold or other minor illness I think about her words.

    “Survival often depends on a specific focus: A relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house.”
     ― Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

so frail, so small

    but no one likes you

garden slug

“Invisible Work” by Alison Luterman

Because no one could ever praise me enough,

because I don’t mean these poems only

but the unseen

unbelievable effort it takes to live

the life that goes on between them,

I think all the time about invisible work.

About the young mother on Welfare

I interviewed years ago,

who said, “It’s hard.

You bring him to the park,

run rings around yourself keeping him safe,

cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,

and there’s no one

to say what a good job you’re doing,

how you were patient and loving

for the thousandth time even though you had a headache.”

And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself

because I am lonely,

when all the while,

as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried

by great winds across the sky,

thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,

the slow, unglamorous work of healing,

the way worms in the garden

tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe

and bees ransack this world into being,

while owls and poets stalk shadows,

our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers

for everything, and the sea

is a mother too,

whispering and whispering to us

long after we have stopped listening.

I stopped and let myself lean

a moment, against the blue

shoulder of the air. The work

of my heart

is the work of the world’s heart.

There is no other art.

“Love in the Country” by William Stafford
from Stories That Could Be True

We live like this: no one but

some of the owls awake, and of them

only near ones really awake.

In the rain yesterday, puddles

on the walk to the barn sounded their

quick little drinks.

The edge of the haymow, all

soaked in moonlight,

dreams out there like silver music.

Are there farms like this where

no one likes to live?

And the sky going everywhere?

While the earth breaks the soft horizon

eastward, we study how to deserve

what has already been given us.

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child's training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy

Whom the Beloved

Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,

Why do you still

Throw sticks at your heart

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.

A Prayer to Adam by Robert Cording

from Common Life

Muse of names,

Help us to know

What we cannot name.

Gardener of paradise,

Help us grow upright

With the modesty

Of plants that find

Freedom in their lack

Of choices, and thrive.

Father of death,

Help us to live

With our dying

So that we m ay find

Ourselves walking back

Down a path we forgot,

Towards a field

Here on earth

Where the sun is

So bright and clear

Even the dullest sparrow

Is seen in the richness

Of its browns and grays,

The streaks on its breast

Numbered in our sight.