Friday, February 14, 2025

Valentine's Day

February 14th is a holy day. There’s nothing more sacred than love, being met, where we can discover our full selves. Who is to be more revered than the person who can received us and be received.

Love is the opposite of death. The way compassion is the antithesis of dispassion, callous indifference. Now more than ever, love is our stay against hatred and oppression. Even when we rage against the dying of the light we do so in the name of love. Love is what is missing in a room of nefarious schemers.

I can imagine that someone, early on, profoundly unloved Donald and his wound is now ours. Against all the avarice and loathing let loose in the scramble for power and domination let this Valentine’s Day be our filibuster against the madness of our country, our stay halting the moral violence in the common air. 

Love expressed is risky. The designated day has to overcome the ridicule of cynics along with the usual monetizing by merchants of roses and chocolates. Then there are the recycled verses of Hallmark cards all of which tend to degrade true affection.

But I say, let it be, all of it. The flowers and the candy, even the bad poetry. We live with a paucity of language for love. It is far easier to write a poem of vehemence and dread than one from the loving heart. Love eludes what is sayable.

Life is an astonishment and warrants an astonishing embrace and exclamation. Love is, of course, more about being than saying yet we get revitalized in trying to find the words. I can't carry a tune, but I sing anyway. Let it be celebrated today and renewed every day thereafter.


No comments:

Post a Comment