Reflections on Love
Blessed are the Man and the Woman
Blessed are the man and the woman
who have grown beyond their greed and put an end to their hatred and no longer nourish illusions. But they delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night. They are like trees planted near flowing rivers, which bear fruit when they are not ready. Their leaves will not fall or whither. Everything they do will succeed. Psalm 1: Translated by Stephen Mitchell ––excerpt from A Book of Psalms: Selections adapted from the Hebrew |
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. |
Jalal ad-Din Rumi on Love
Love Quote
The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along. The Love Candle The man to whom the mystery of Love is unveiled Exists no longer, but vanishes into Love. Place before the sun a burning candle And watch its brilliance disappear before that blaze. The candle exists no longer, it is transformed into Light; There are no more signs of it, it itself becomes sign. |
From the Imitation of Christ - Thomas à Kempis
Love is a great thing, a great good in
every way. It alone lightens what is
heavy and leads smoothly over all roughness.
For it carries a burden without being burdened, and makes every bitter
thing sweet. Love wants to be lifted up,
not held back by anything low. Love
wants to be free, and far from all worldly desires, so that its inner vision
may not be dimmed and good fortune bind it or misfortune cast it down.
Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider; nothing happier, nothing fuller, nothing better in heaven and earth. For love is born of God and can find rest only in God, beyond all created things. Love flies, runs, and rejoices. It is free and nothing can hold it back. It gives all for all, because it rests in the highest good, from whom all goodness originates and flows. It doesn’t look to the gifts, but to the giver of all good things. Love often knows no limits, but burns beyond every limit. Love feels no burden, shrinks from no effort, aims beyond its strength, sees nothing as impossible, for it believes that all things are possible. Love is capable of everything, and it succeeds because it is confident of the result, while someone without love loses courage and gives up. |
Hawaiian Love Song
Here all seeking is over.
The lost has been found. A mate has been found To share the chills of winter. Now Love asks that you be united. Here is a place to rest, A place to sleep, A place in heaven. Now two are becoming one. The black night is scattered. The eastern sky grows bright. At last the great day has come! |
Hafiz on Love
From the Stairway of Existence
We are People who need to love, because Love is the soul’s life, Love is simply creation’s greatest joy. I Want Both of Us I want both of us To start talking about this great love As if you, I, and the Sun were all married And living in a tiny room, Helping each other to cook, Do the wash, Weave and sew, Care for our beautiful Animals. We all leave each morning To labor on the earth’s field. No one does not lift a great pack. I want both of us to start singing like two Traveling minstrels About this extraordinary existence We share, As if You, I, and God were all married And living in A tiny Room. |
When I am With You - Roy Croft
I
love you
Not only for what you are But for what I am When I am with you. I love you, Not only for what You have made of yourself But for what You are making of me. I love you, For the part of me That you bring out; I love you, For putting your hand Into my heaped-up heart And passing over All the foolish, weak things That you can’t help Dimly seeing there, And for drawing out Into the light All the beautiful belongings That no one else had looked Quite far enough to find. I love you because you Are helping me to make Of the lumber of my life Not a tavern but a temple; Out of works Of my every day Not a reproach But a song. |
A Vision - Denise Levertov
Two angels among the throng of angels
paused in the upward abyss, facing angel to angel. Blue and green glowed the wing feathers of one angel, from red to gold the sheen of the other’s. These two, so far as angels may dispute, were poised on the brink of dispute, brink of fall from angelic stature, for these tall ones, angels whose wingspan encompasses entire earthly villages, whose heads if their feet touched earth would top pines or redwoods, live by their vision’s harmony which sees at one glance the dark and light of the moon. These two hovered dazed before one another, for one saw the seafeathered, peacock breakered crests of the other angel’s magnificence, different from his own, and the other’s eyes flickered with vision of flame petallings, cream-gold grainfeather glitterings, the wings of his fellow, and both in immortal danger of dwindling, of dropping into the remote forms of a lesser being. But as these angels, the only halted ones among the many who passed and repassed, trod air as swimmers tread water, each gazing on the angelic wings of the other, the intelligence proper to great angels flew into their wings, the intelligence called intellectual love, which, understanding the perfections of scarlet, leapt up among blues and greens songshafted, and among amber down illumined the sapphire bloom, so that each angel was iridescent with the strange newly-seen hues he watched; and their discovering pause and the speech their silent interchange of perfection was never became a shrinking to opposites, and they remained free in the heavenly chasm, remained angels, but dreaming angels, each imbued with the mysteries of the other. |