February Twenty-Twenty-Three

 

Keep love in front of my eyes. 

Love in the car. 

Love in the waiting room. 

Love on the phone. 

Love at my laptop.

Love in the laundry room. 

-Kate Bowler 

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark. but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. - Wendell Berry

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me.' 

Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky. - Hāfiz

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image, Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. - Thomas Merton. 

I compensated for my former indifference 
by the twin exercise of attention and patience, 
Let's call it love. 
-Sylvain Tesson from the exquisite movie The Velvet Queen 

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship with each other of love. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved. –Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, April 1948