A thought on love

Happy Valentine’s Day to you!

If you find yourself wanting this day to mean something more to you – know you are not disqualified from joy and belonging, this day or any other.

There is more beyond the veil of our own perceptions of love: how much or little we have of it, or how we experience it – how it may come up lacking – in the single years and the not-single years. There is more. Whether your life feels full or lonely or some strange mixture of both, we are kept and held in the love of God more than we know.

Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.
May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
With which your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

—John O’Donohue, “For Longing”, To Bless The Space Between Us.