Of Poetry and Puppies

I bought a new book the other day “Love Poems from God” Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West edited by Daniel Ladinsky. It has poems by Hafiz, Rumi, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, Rabia, and a few others. I read most of it yesterday. I find that with poetry I need to swim around in it for a while before I can start to understand where the current is leading me.

There is a bit of everything in these poems: tenderness, beauty, humor, sensuality, honesty and even the occasional bawdiness, but the overall theme is the mutality of our love for God and God’s love for us. As I was rereading it this morning my awareness of how God sees me – us was recalibrated. I felt the tenderness of God’s love for all of creation and I felt the preciousness of both beauty and suffering. It was warm and fuzzy, but I sensed that it wasn’t meant to end there.

An hour or two later I was reading a book for my spiritual direction practicum and came across another poem describing God’s response to the Soul.  One of the lines said, “For I yearn to be loved” and I just stopped.  “For I yearn to be loved.” Wow. I think I had forgotten that.  Or at the very least distorted it.

I have been aware of my longing for God and my desire to please God and yet have rarely spent much time thinking about God’s desire for me. What does it mean that God yearns to be loved by me? What would that be like for my strongest awarenss to be not what do I need to do for God, but that God is longing for my love.  How might I then offer my love if I truly believed that my love was the most important thing?

I was talking about this with my husband over lunch. We asked ourselves “What does God’s longing look like?”  and then proceeded each to go about our day’s work.  I just now got up and saw my dog sitting on my husband’s lap as he works on the other computer.  She was sitting there – not lying down and sleeping as is her usual habit – but sitting there watching him – just wanting to be loved.  It was a perfect picture of God. There were no demands – my husband kept on working and they were there together and that was enough.

WHEREVER YOU MAY LOOK

Wisdom is

so kind and wise

that wherever you may look

you can learn something

about God.

Why

would not

the omnipresent

teach that

way?

St. Catherine of Siena

Check out the quote section of SoulStream website for more poems as the month goes by.  I have decided to offer Valentines to and from God for the entire month and will be changing them every few days.

Peace.

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