Love Dogs
Love Dogs
by Rumi
One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I've never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Most of us look for love in only the most obvious places, and as a result, most of us come away disappointed. It’s as if we are still grade school kids, counting valentines as a measure of what matters. The love that matters is not typically the subject of sonnets or love songs.
There can be love in being told we are wrong. There can be love in sharing a regret. There can be love in asking for help. There can be love in communicating hurt.
There can be love in telling hard truths. Most of us find it painful to live at this level of love, but it can be there, even in these most unlikely places. It isn’t the kind of love we’ve been promised in the fairy tales of princes and fairy godmothers, but it is the kind experienced by frogs and dwarfs. It’s the sort of love that can bring us closer to finding the missing pieces of ourselves that we need to make us whole.
Some of the most loving things I’ve ever experienced I haven’t been ready for, wasn’t looking for, and nearly didn’t recognize. A few of them I didn’t want. But all of them have changed me, transformed some part of me, filled in a place that I didn’t even know was empty.
When the valentine has been tucked away in a drawer, the candy eaten, the flowers faded and gone, there will be other legacies of love that will last as long as we do, because they have brought us to know an element of life—part feeling, part idea, part mystery—that once known, is ours to keep.
by David S. Blanchard, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York, from his meditation manual A Temporary State of Grace: Meditations. Published by Skinner House Books in 1997, this book is available from the CLF library or 617-948-6150.
Love First
Love First
What we need is a revolution in our values, a revolution that turns our attention more reverently and responsibly to the interdependent, relational character of life. What we need is a spiritual and practical revolution that embodies love for neighbor and for the world through sustaining structures of care and responsibility….
Loving our neighbor implicates us in loving the whole network of life. Science has given us photographs of the earth from space. We can see we are one blue globe, wreathed with clouds. We know the crust of the earth floats on a core of fire. Even the rocks are part of a complex flow of elements that fold down into that molten core and rise again. We dwell in our cities and towns on a living, breathing planet molded by transforming fire, flowing waters, the exhalations of trees, and the inbreathing of animals. This interconnectedness of all things calls for wisdom and reverence. We cannot trample this landscape of life as ignorant fools and expect to be safe. We cannot turn from our bonds and obligations for and with one another and expect everyone to be okay. We cannot love after the fact and expect love to be able to save life. Maybe in the end love will save us all, but it has a lot better chance at the beginning.
We need to love from the start—not as an emergency strategy when everything has gone wrong.
by Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian Universalist), from her book Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now. Edited by Robert Harvies and published by Skinner House in 2006, this book is available from the UUA bookstore (800-215-9076) or through the CLF Library (617-948-6150).
