Where, O Where, Is Love?

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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believe in love

not just any love

but that love which we cannot truly understand

that love which just “is”

and in which we all participate

that love which permeates the world

and us, and in which we

“live and breathe and have our being”

yes we can deny it

and behave in ways that

(from our limited perspective) should negate it

we can wander far from ‘the path’

into the wasteland

that place of barren emptiness

or into deep, tangled, jungle like

wildernesses of our own making

we can, perhaps

lose all sense of this love

but this love is the Sacred

and it is woven into our very being

it is always, always there

and we can never (I believe) totally deny it

we can always, always

find it

sometimes this love may seem

like that last precious spark

which we must nurture, and gently guard

until it bursts in to flame once more

but the divine spark

cannot be eradicated

ever

suppressed?

well hidden?

absolutely

most of us have done this at one moment or another

and we see people who seem to be quite adept

at hiding the divine love

(just look at their lives, so devoid of love and compassion

 so full of hate and greed, and a lust for power)

but there is a love and blessing

we cannot step outside of

we cannot step outside it

and neither can “they”

for the danger is not merely

that we will fail to believe this about ourselves

but that we will fail to believe it about

those around us

whom we would rather hate and fear

O Sacred One!

Lessons to be learned

Lessons to be learned

Teach us we pray!

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Where can I go from your Spirit?

    Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

    if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

    your right hand will hold me fast.

                                           Psalm 139