Tag Archives: love

Dear Frustrated in Love: Read a Classic

By Robin Bates | Published: January 25, 2012

Literature is better than any self help book for relationship guidance.

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Come, My Light, My Feast, My Strength

By Robin Bates | Published: October 23, 2011

In “The Call,” George Herbert opens himself to God’s love with a confidence not found in many of his poems.

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Summer in the Glen

By Robin Bates | Published: July 31, 2011

Scott Bates tells us that when we give ourselves over to the universe of which we are a part, then we escape the entrapment of self.

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This Is the Golden Morning of Love

By Robin Bates | Published: June 5, 2011

A wedding poem seems appropriate for June. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lovely “Marriage Morning” draws me, maybe because it captures some of the anxieties of the wedding day and not just the joys.

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Finding Love while Dying

By Robin Bates | Published: March 1, 2011

From time to time I bring you updates about my friend Alan Paskow, currently failing because of cancer. Julia and I visit the Paskows every Sunday night. Julia administers a Reiki massage to Jackie while Alan and I converse. In our recent visits, Alan is always in bed when I talk to him. Our conversation […]

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A Message of Love for Fractious Times

By Robin Bates | Published: January 9, 2011

Spiritual Sunday In last Monday’s post a fascinating discussion was started when I applied a passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov to the debate over whether society should step in and help out homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages. Zosima, a very spiritual character and an elder in the Russian Orthodox Church, warns his listeners that […]

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Dostoevsky’s Support for Troubled Homes

By Robin Bates | Published: January 4, 2011

In debates about whether or not to help out troubled homeowners, Fyodor Dostoevsky would probably be in favor.  I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov and am struck by how applicable it seems to the debate over foreclosures. The mortgage crisis, of course, pushed the world economy into recession, and foreclosures on homes are still […]

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War or Lucasta: Which Is Worthier?

By Robin Bates | Published: December 23, 2010

“You are off to blog rather than snuggle with your wife?” asked my wife incredulously as I slipped out of bed trying not to wake her. Which of course brought to mind a poem that I could blog about: To Lucasta, Going to the War By Richard Lovelace Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, […]

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Out of Near Death, a Vision of Love

By Robin Bates | Published: August 22, 2010

Spiritual Sunday Thanks to all of you who wrote this past week following the twin blows of my uncle’s death and news of the severity of Alan’s latest cancer diagnosis. The discussion in response to Thursday’s post about which goes deeper, self or love, brought to the periphery of my mind a catechism in which […]

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