“There are no creatures you cannot love,” Tom Hennen writes in “From a Country Overlooked.” It is a message America currently needs.
Tag Archives: love
Love in the Time of Covid-19
For my 47th wedding anniversary, I reflect upon the concluding chapter of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” which seems only fitting.
Come, Holy Spirit
Pentecost Sunday Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz uses the occasion of Pentecost to explore the nature of faith in his poem “Veni Creator.” Although the apostles may have been filled with the Holy Spirit, what about those of us who don’t experience tongues of flame? Here’s Luke’s description of moment (Acts 2:1-4): When the […]
The Wine of Love Is Music
Spiritual Sunday I attended a joyous Des Moines wedding yesterday, one where the bride, an avid runner, wore running shoes. The groom is a runner as well. Things promise well. Here’s a lovely wedding poem by the 18th century poet James Thomson, author of The Seasons and “Rule, Britannia.” I send it out to all […]
Open the Love Window and Kiss the Moon
Thursday – Valentine’s Day Kathy Hamman, a dear family friend, alerted my mother and me to this wonderful Rumi poem for Valentine’s Day. (My mother ran it in her Sewanee Messenger poetry column.) I have used other poems suggested by Kathy in the past, but this is particularly meaningful because Kathy is currently fighting late stage cancer. That her […]
June Love, Simple and Entire
For a June poem, here’s Richard Wilbur reminiscing about young love.
Love, the Lesson which the Lord Us Taught
Edmund Spenser joyfully welcomes in Easter, proclaiming “Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.”
Chaucer Invented St. Valentine’s Day
Chaucer may have invented St. Valentine’s Day as we have come to know it. “Parliament of Fowls” was written to celebrate the occasion, along with a royal wedding.
Love Came Down at Christmas
People ask for physical miracles so that they may believe. Christina Rossetti points out that Jesus gave us something far more miraculous: divine love.