This is the third recent post in which I have pondered the meaning and the application of something that I read long ago and that has stayed with me since I first read it: “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

I have never met an angel, nor can I claim any authority about the existence of angels. However, I do suspect that if angels exist, they definitely do take themselves  lightly, and they definitely can fly.

I can’t fly. However, there have been plenty of times when I felt very light, in the sense of open, accessible, intuitive, spontaneous, and caring. These have usually been times when I was behaving lovingly to my wife or to someone else.

To love is to be focused in a caring way on someone other than oneself. While you are loving, you are free of the burden of your own self-centeredness. And that means lighter, more expanded in consciousness, more heart-felt — and less burdened.

The more loving you are, the lighter and more free you become. That’s pretty close to flying, I’d say.

If angels exist, they are highly-evolved beings, for sure. I suspect that angels are very close to pure love, which would make them beings of light. Angels can fly, because they have very little ego self that ties them down.

The more loving we are, the more highly-evolved we become (just as the more murderously we behave, the less evolved we become.) The angelic may be well beyond our reach. However, we can still learn from the angels. We can learn to behave more lovingly. And in the process, we can become lighter and less a burden to ourselves and to others . We can realize what may be the real reason that we are here on the earth — to brighten the lives of others through our love. Through love, we can take flight.

This is a time of year when people give gifts to one another. Everybody is supposed to get a gift; nobody should be left out. That’s why we need to get something for Johnny’s daughter, whose name, by the way, is “Anna.” not “What‘s-Her-Name.” It doesn’t matter that she is 17 now and not the 11 year old she was when we last met: She has to have a gift.

It is good thing that everyone will receive something when we gather for the annual Christmas gift distribution. Nevertheless, important things can easily be forgotten in this cultural mania for covering all the bases at Christmas time. Specifically, it is easy to forget the message that should be behind gift giving. That message is “I see you. I care about you. I want you to know that your happiness and your welfare matter to me. I hope that my gift pleases you and that, in giving it to you, you will know that you are important to me.”

Gift giving should be an expression of love. This special holiday season of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Hindu Festival of Lights is a time for expressing love and caring.

Now to be realistic, we can’t love everyone to the same degree — at least not the sort of love that is an expression of genuine, personal valuing. We can’t love Johnny’s daughter, Anna, whom we scarcely remember, in the same way that we, say, love our partner. But wait a minute. Perhaps we can also love Anna personally if we sit next to her at Christmas dinner, if we go out of our way to talk with her — if we give her the gift of our attention and our warmth.

Here is a way to use the notion of gift giving to deepen love between yourself and your partner. Train yourself to see that anything anyone does to benefit you, at any time of year, is that person’s gift to you, and therefore worthy of your notice and appreciation. I mean that your husband’s preparing supper when it isn’t his turn to cook but he knows that you don’t feel well is a gift to you. Go further — see as a gift even what your partner does that is “his job” or “her job,” and regularly give thanks for that, too.

Similarly, whatever you do that benefits your partner is your gift to him or her — as long as you have your partner‘s welfare in mind and tell yourself at the time, “This is my gift to you.”

Why not keep it simple, you ask? Why not just figure that your partner does his or her job and you do yours, and leave love out of it? No problem, if your relationship is basically a utilitarian one or if you two are both going along to get along with each other. On the other hand, if you want a relationship of love with your partner, then the more you name the helpful actions of either of you as  love, the more love you bring into your relationship.

I am talking here about ordinary actions, as well as extraordinary ones. You are training yourself to recognize the ordinary kindnesses, considerations and friendly gestures of relationship as expressions of love. By doing so, over time you may discover that you two are living together with love. And what a Christmas present, a birthday present, an any-day present that would be — to take love into your relationship in simple ways and then to realize one day that love really lives between you!