Love

I started making Valentines's Day cards in work today for the children to being home to their mums and dads.  We cut out pink, red and purple hearts.  I suppose we will stick these to cards during the week and get the glitter out.  I hummed love songs while cutting, don't be cruel, a good heart, oh and prefab sprout - I must dig out their cd.  The children were highly amused.  I'm not in love myself and I can't decide whether to send none or three cards this year!  I'm not in love, romantically, but I am in love with a lot of things in my life.  My attitude to love has changed a lot over the past few years, or my opinion of it.  One of my colleagues believes Valentines is just a money making racket!  She's not alone here.

Anyway I do believe in being romantic.  I love roses and champagne.  But I don't really care about the day this year, honestly I don't (the lady doth protest too much methinks) but really I don't.  I'm quite happy. 

I like this poem by Czeslaw Milosz:

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

And below is another just found online, written by a sufi mystic:

Wonder

Wonder,
A garden among the flames!

My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.

My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.

And from wikipedia another translation of Ibn Arabi:

My heart has adopted every shape; it has become a pasture for gazelles, and a convent for Christian monks.

A temple for idols, and a pilgrim's Ka'ba, The tables of a Torah, and the pages of a Koran.
I follow the religion of Love; wherever Love's camels turn, there Love is my religion and faith.