Love is that flame that once kindled burns everything, and only the mystery and the journey remain.
– Angela Arrien
Monday was St. Valentine's Day and, to celebrate, Doug and I hosted a small gathering of friends at my home in St. Paul.
Above (from left): Doug, Bob, John, Brian, Kathleen and Sean.Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
– Ursula K. LeGuin
The Lathe of Heaven
The Lathe of Heaven
Left: We didn't make bread but we did make and decorate heart-shaped brownies!
Right: With my friend Kathleen, who brought along a wonderful book entitled Divine Sparks: Collected Wisdom of the Heart. The quotes I share in this post are from this book. (That's an icon of Sts Sergius and Bacchus on the wall behind us!)
Left: Brian shares a "divine spark"! Actually, we all took turns choosing and sharing excerpts from the book's section on love.
To name is to love. To be named is to be loved.
– Madeleine L’Engle
Following are some more reflections on love from the anthology Divine Sparks: Collected Wisdom of the Heart.
Only love can create intimacy, and freedom, too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one – neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual orientation; race nor mind-set. . . . Love measures our stature; the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in the world than that of a man wrapped up in himself.
To love is not a state; it is a direction.
– Simone Weil
Love is the only force that can make things one without destroying them.
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Falling in love is not an extension of one’s limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.
– M. Scott Peck
All negativity is a cry for more love. . . . Love people for who they are, not for who you want them to be.
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry
If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, “I love you,” I must be able to say, “I love in you everybody. I love through you the world. I love in you also myself.”
– Erich Fromm
The Forgotten Language:
An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths
The Forgotten Language:
An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths
To love you is to sing with you, cry with you, pray with you, act with you to recreate the world.
– Carter Heyward, Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ
Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality
Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality
Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.
– Jean Vanier
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
– Elie Wiesel
This is to love: bear with a fault and not be astonished.
– Teresa of Avila
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Waiting to Hold You
Polyeuct and Nearchus: "Brothers by Affection"
Quote of the Day – September 3, 2010
Making Love, Giving Life
The Many Manifestations of God's Loving Embrace
Love is Love
And Love is Lord of All
Song of Songs: The Bible's Gay Love Poem
"More Lovely Than the Dawn": God as Divine Lover
A Special "Welcome Home"
Something In Your Eyes
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