Valentines

Valentine’s Day February 14 2010


Lightheartedly, we celebrate the feast

Of passion, of romance --

Take the chance to say and act our love of others,

To feel the joy that loving brings.

All love is God’s, yet all the love that people feel expressed

Comes through human hearts and minds.

We are God’s Valentines!



Reflection:

Valentine’s Day – maybe because for us in the northern hemisphere it represents a day of happiness amid dark winter’s gloom – always lights my heart with joy. Just the fact that we seek to express love and look to receive it means that we experience more expressions of it on this day than on ordinary days – but we could choose to express love to our dear ones much more often on a daily basis. Why don’t we do that?

Love is as essential to well-being as food, heat, water, and rest. May all God’s children learn the joy of expressing it frequently and creatively. Love is like a mirror – universally, its expression gets reflected back to us.

Today, I look at plants on my kitchen windowsill – expressions of love, all of them: the heart-shaped bamboo that I bought for Ellen on Valentine’s Day three years ago; the Thanksgiving cactus that never bloomed until Valentine’s Day last year, after Ellen’s death, and whose red flowers started to open again today, Valentine’s Day 2010, for the second time ever; the peace lily that a friend gave me in December 2008 in memory of Ellen, the spider plants that are growing from a sprout given to me by a friend last year; the thriving jade plant that my daughter Liessa gave us to replace the large plant that Ellen and I had had to leave behind when we moved from California in 2006; the succulent that we cut, with permission, from a large plant in the home of the first friends we made here in North Carolina. These plants share the one sunny window location in my well-shaded house, and whenever I water them or appreciate them, I appreciate the love and friendship of which they remind me. I love flowers, and I also look at the bookshelf in the family room, appreciating the lovely roses that I received as an expression of love to celebrate this year’s Valentine’s Day, as I am blessed with a new person in my life with whom to share love.

I am grateful for abundant love, this day and every day.



Know Thyself February 13 2009

Who am I?

The meditators say to look within.

But am I all within?

I see and feel my body: skin, shadow, bones and motion,

And think I am a solid, separate being.



But I’m not separate.



My breath links me with universal life;

I share my genes with many creatures;

My mind spins countless thoughts and tales

Spawned by sense and feelings --

All converging from around me,

Not from within.



And I’m not solid.



This body is a cloak,

Transport for this time and place --

My real self’s endless, spirit, one with all.



My life is perfect, infinite.

I am love, and nothing else.





Valentine Memories, from a year ago, 2009.

A year ago, the day before Valentine’s Day, I awoke with a Valentine Haiku fully written in my mind. I had obviously dreamed it, but I hadn’t written it. Every year, on February 14, Ellen used to write a Haiku to celebrate our love on this special day. I think Ellen wrote this one, although she had died the previous November. When I typed it and saved it, it looked like all the other poems I had typed. But when I printed out that month’s poems, it, alone, printed in blue ink, as if to demonstrate that I had not written it, as I had the other poems in that collection.



Happy Valentine’s, February 13 2009

Valentine’s Day.

We honored our love yearly on this day.

In Berkeley we had dinner at Quinn’s Lighthouse

Because they gave a rose to every lady,

And we -- giggling, feeling special -- received two.

Each year, you wrote a haiku,

Just to say “I love you.”

Happy, I awaited your inspired verse

Made specially for us.



This year, I’m glad we can still mark undying love.

You sent a haiku in my sleep.

Your surprising verse delighted me.

And I thank you for the cactus flower --

Out of season, it will bloom tomorrow.

Happy Love Day to you, too.



Valentine Haiku from a Dream, February 14 2009

We are not one not two --

Hearts joined in deathless love --

Spirits still entwined.