Shakespeare on love (10)

After him I love
more than I love these eyes,
more than my life,
more by all mores...

Shakespeare on love (9)

Your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked;
no sooner looked but they loved;
no sooner loved but they sighed;
no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason;
no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.

Shakespeare on love (8)

For such as I am, all true lovers are,
unstaid and skittish in all motions else
save in the constant image of the creature
that is beloved.

O Let it Freely Burn

From the Forward Day by Day devotional, for May 31, 2009:

Here am I, O Love divine.
I rise, I dress, I eat, I work, play sleep, and rise again.
It’s not a bad life, and yet it leaves a cold and empty place within me.
So come down, O Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down!
Seek thou this soul of mine, for I cannot seek thee.
I know neither where nor how to look.
Seek thou this soul of mine, and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.
Warm the cold and fill the empty place with thyself, for thou thyself art warmth and thou thyself art fullness.
Thou art all compassion; pure unbounded love thou art.
O Comforter, draw near.
Nearer and nearer draw to me till thou art nearer than the breath in my lungs and the beat of my heart.
Within my heart appear—be seen be felt, rule.
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing, until my heart burns with holy fire.
Then let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming, with a flame no ocean can quench.
Unhindered, unchecked, O let it freely burn!

Shakespeare on love (7)

So tedious is this day
as is the night before some festival
to an impatient child that hath new robes
and may not wear them.

Shakespeare on love (6)

I am giddy. Expectation whirls me round.
The'imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense.

Shakespeare on love (5)

The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none.

Shakespeare on love (4)

Madam, you have bereft me of all words.
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins.

Shakespeare on love (3)

Hot blood begets hot thoughts,
and hot thoughts beget hot deeds,
and hot deeds is love.

Shakespeare on love (2)

...when love speaks,
the voice of all the gods
make heaven
drowsy with the harmony.

St. Francis de Sales on confidence in God

"The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost heart. This cross He now sends you He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His holy Name, anointed it with His consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God."

Love letters from home

Yesterday I named the series I'll be teaching. I'm calling it "Love letters from home."

Time to get off the bench...

A few weeks ago God began whispering to me "Get off the bench."

Part of me wondered what the heck He was talking about; I'm working for Him constantly.

But most of me knew what He meant.

And then the door opened.

Starting in June, I will be introducing a group of women to the concepts I play with here. Please pray for me; that the women would blossom in response to the intimacy He desires with them.

Pencils in the hand of God

We are all pencils in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to the world.

-- Mother Teresa

Magical decoys for eternal delights

From Care of the Soul (Ch. 4):

"'What is human love? What is its purpose? It is the desire for union with a beautiful object in order to make eternity available to mortal life.' It is a fundamental teaching of the Neo-platonists that earthly pleasures are an invitation to eternal delights. Ficino says that these things of ordinary life that enchant us toward eternity are 'magical decoys.' In other words, what appears to be a fully earthly relationship between two human individuals is at the same time a path toward far deeper experiences of the soul. ... The early Romantic German poet Novalis put it quite simply: love, he says, was not made for this world."

Desire for pure absorption

From Care of the Soul (Ch. 4):

"There is something about being in love that wishes for blindness, pure absorption and freedom from complexity."

Only one cure

From Care of the Soul (Ch. 4):

"A general principle we can take from Freud is that love sparks imagination to extraordinary activity. Being 'in love' is like being 'in imagination.' The literal concerns of everyday life, yesterday such a preoccupation, now practically disappear in the rush of love's daydreams. Concrete reality recedes as the imaginal world settles in. Thus, the 'divine madness' of love is akin to the mania of paranoia and other dissociations.

Does this mean that we need to be cured of this madness? Robert Burton in his massive self-help book of the seventeenth century, The Anatomy of Melancholy, says there is only one cure for the melancholic sickness of love: enter into it with abandon."

On unearthly cravings

From Care of the Soul (Ch. 4)

"Love releases us into the realm of divine imagination, where the soul is expanded and reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs. We think that when a lover inflates his loved one he is failing to acknowledge her flaws--'Love is blind.' But it may be the other way around. Love allows a person to see the true angelic nature of another person, the halo, the aureole of divinity. "

Not to mention a Saturday morning...

Knowing you'll have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.

-- Vladimir Nabokov

Come see a man who told me everything I have done

During devotions this morning I began to think about how the scriptures repeatedly couple the concepts of marital infidelity and deific infidelity.

I've also been thinking of how many Gospel encounters describe Jesus' interacting with women in sexual sin. He seems to have a special affinity for them.

And I wonder why this is. I haven't come to any conclusions yet, just still wondering.