After reading today’s poem, simply entitled “Love,” I find myself applying the words to the relationships people have with their partners (spouses, significant others). While the thought of abundant time spent together, pandemic style, might have initially sounded like a great opportunity to spend extra quality time with one’s sweetheart, we know from personal experience and the media that many couples have found this period to be challenging.

Author Czeslaw Milosz’s message centers around love requiring us to see ourselves through a lens that we don’t often use.  We’re encouraged to regard ourselves from a distance, as another person (such as our partner) would. In this way the entire landscape (relationship), of which we are but one part, comes more into view, and our perspective is widened.  Dr. Brené Brown’s words come to mind…one of the most courageous things we can say to our partner (or anyone) when we’re struggling with connection and understanding is, “Tell me more.”

There’s an online series that’s being offered by two UU ministers, Rev. Jake Morrill and Rev. Laura Bogle, to address such challenges.
Check it out!

Sending love,
Lori

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.

~ Czeslaw Milosz ~