Only Love

 

"Only love is big enough to hold all the pain of this world." -- Sharon Salzberg

And so I imagine the entire earth

as one beating heart held in the space

of this universe, inside a larger body

we can't fathom, filling with enough

love to lead each of us out of the cave

of our personal pain and into the light--

enough love to lead all humans as one

out of collective fear, rage, and hate

into a place of peace that is found only

within our own hearts, beating in sync

with the pulse of this planet we were

born to inhabit, despite the daily storms

which overtake us and make us forget

we are the lifeblood pumped into these

veins, every particle of love we generate

running into rivers, lakes, and creeks,

evaporating into the air we breathe,

give back, and breathe again.

--James Crews

[Our son reading a favorite childhood story to his sons].

Merry

  

It’s a word which only comes out at Christmas.

 

As for the rest of the year,

it’s as if it has been packed away in the attic

with the decorations and the tinsel,

waiting for its own time to shine.

 

Rarely do we play well with it.

We do not let it loose for birthdays

or anniversaries; only in error does it intrude

on the happiness of a new year.

 

But at Christmas, it emerges blinking

into the light, red-cheeked and perky,

in a perfect state of mild inebriation,

writing itself into Christmas cards,

 

greeting friends on doorsteps,

embracing family before they take off their shoes,

warming strangers on icy pavements.

Merry Christmas, we say. Merry Christmas.

—Brian Bilston

[Merry Christmas Eve with friends and neighbors].

The Concert

 

The harpist believes there is music
in the skeletons of fish

The French horn player believes

in enormous golden snails

The piano believes in nothing

and grins from ear to ear

Strings are scratching their bellies

openly, enjoying it

Flutes and oboes complain

in dialects of the same tongue

Drumsticks rattle a calfskin

from the sleep of another life

because the supernatural crow

on the podium flaps his wings

and death is no excuse

--Lisel Mueller

[Photo of my favorite musicians].

In the Face of War, I’m So Small – Yet, Love is So Big

I can’t make the
world be peaceful
I can’t stall tanks
from roaring down streets
I can’t prevent children
from having to hide in bunkers
I can’t convince the news to
stop turning war into a video game
I can’t silence the sound of bombs
tearing neighborhoods apart
I can’t transform a guided missile
into a bouquet of flowers
I can’t make a warmonger
have an ounce of empathy

I can’t convince ambassadors
to quit playing truth or dare
I can’t deflect a sniper’s bullet
from turning a wife into a widow
I can’t stave off a country from being
reduced to ash and to rubble

I can’t do any of that
the only thing I can do
is to love the next person I encounter
without any strings or conditions
to love my neighbor
so fearlessly that
it causes a ripple
that stretches from
one horizon to the next

I can’t force peace
upon the world
but I can become a force
of peace in the world
because sometimes
sometimes all it takes
is a candle, a single candle
lit in the darkness
to start a movement

“Lord, make me a candle
of comfort in this world
let me burn with peace”

--John Roedel

See with Every Turning Day

 

See with every turning day,

how each season wants to make

a child of you again, wants you to become

a seeker after rainfall and birdsong,

watch how it weathers you to a testing

in the tried and true, tells you

with each falling leaf, to leave and slip away,

even from the branch that held you,

to be courageous, to go when you need to,

to be like that last word you’d want to say

before you leave the world.

--David Whyte

Sometimes

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering

bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop

what you are doing

right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

--David Whyte

[Krista Tippett's Ted Talk on Living the Questions].

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyOcTu8B2IP/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Voltaire Quote

 

 

"Those who can make you believe absurdities

can make you commit atrocities"

--Voltaire