I recently saw an interesting movie, Keeping the Faith. Three times. I would have described it as a beautiful movie had it not been for the lemonade aspect of it. There was one line in it that captured my attention right away, and it has been on my mind ever since. The line came as part of a dialogue between an older priest and a young priest, after the young priest (Edward Norton) experienced serious doubts about celibacy due to falling in love with a woman whom he had known all his life. He questioned his faith because now he had different ideas about the pledge to celibacy that he had made a long time ago. As a response to the young priest’s turmoil, his mentor said (something like) “What makes choices permanent is that one makes the same choice over and over again.”

I love this statement because it recognizes the dynamic aspect of the world, the complexity of it. Things change, and we cannot do anything about it. We cannot cling to the same ideas, persons, or things just because they made sense at one point or another. If we do that then we become, essentially, fundamentalists in the worst sense of that word. But, if we look at all the changes that took place in the world around us, and we still make the same choice when in doubt, then this is a sign of a core alignment between us and the choice we keep making over and over again.

We often call it true love.