Tags
Daniel Ladinsky, God, harmony, hearts, love, Love Poems from God, sacred voices, St. Thomas Aquinas, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
This morning I am feeling a desire to take life one moment at a time, conscious as I go through the day of all the people near and far who do not have the luxury of heated houses and blanketed beds in which they may choose to hunker down to wait out winter’s extreme behavior. This dangerous moment is deceptive in my neighborhood because the sun is streaming in and the sky is blue, whereas in many places the wind has caused storm surges from the beaches and lake effect snow measured in feet rather than inches to warn of possible catastrophe. My only warning of frostbite is looking out my bedroom window to see the wild dancing of the trees. Somehow this moment seems akin to the world situation where on some days there seems to be danger everywhere.
With these thoughts – feelings, really – I turned to Daniel Ladinsky’s book, Love Poems from God, that I sensed might stabilize me. The book has poems that are translations of what Ladinsky calls “twelve sacred voices from East and West.” I opened to the section on St. Thomas Aquinas whom I have always thought a brilliant mind. Ladinsky has opened to me a new appreciation for the soul of this great theologian and this morning I am challenged and comforted at the same time with the poem that follows here. May we all know the truth of it someday.
WE ARE FIELDS BEFORE EACH OTHER
How is it that they live for eons in such harmony –
the billions of stars –
when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.
There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties
from mounting.
Our hearts irrigate this earth.
We are fields before
each other.
How can we live in harmony?
First we need to
know
we are madly in love
with the same
God.
The Sophia Center for Spirituality 