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A Valentine’s Note from JCC: Songs and poems about different kinds of love: for people, for the world, for each other (hopeful, sad, reflective, rowdy)

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SONGS about LOVE:

Blessing for the Brokenhearted  — Jan Richardson
There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.From The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief
© Jan Richardson (Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016). janrichardson.com

Beatitudes for Those Who Love —
This prayer-poem is by Rev. Maren Tirabassi.

For Valentine’s Eve, Luke’s Beatitudes

Blessed are you who are poor
with no pink greeting cards or chocolate,
because you love someone with dementia –
for God remembers enough for both of you.

Blessed are you who are hungry for a love
forbidden by family or culture,
by law or religion,
by damage sustained in heart or spirit,
or by anyone who tears your family apart at a border–
because God promises you the taste of kisses.

Blessed are you who are shunned or bullied
in person and online for your body or your abilities,
for you will have a day  
when you will see yourself in a mirror
and laugh with joy at how God made you beautiful.

Blessed are you when someone
assumes the fact that you didn’t marry
means you don’t know about love,
or when they call a child you cherish –
“just a foster kid,”
or bar the way of the therapy dog
who holds your heart together,
because your wounds do not fit
their definitions,
or turn you away in tears
from an ex-spouse’s visiting hours.

Re-joy in that day, for you understand
far more than most ever will.

But woe to you who hoard a loving family,
rather than sharing it with the lonely,
for you are consoled now.

Woe to you who expect life
to be all honeymoon,
for you won’t be resilient to disappointment.

Woe to you who laugh at anyone
who is unloved,
or whose love is dismissed –
for you will never be able to take it back
when the tears in your life teach you wisdom.

Woe to you when all congratulate
your penmanship or tech savvy in life,
but you forget the teacher
who once told you to make
a Valentine, not just for those like you,
but for everyone in class,

no, not the teacher in second grade –
the one two thousand years ago.

+++

Rev. Maren C. Tirabassi

POEM  — Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

The Dance— Wendell Berry

I would have each couple turn,
join and unjoin, be lost
in the greater turning
of other couples, woven
in the circle of a dance,
the song of long time flowing

over them, so they may return,
turn again in to themselves
out of desire greater than their own,
belonging to all, to each,
to the dance, and to the song
that moves them through the night.

What is fidelity? To what
does it hold? The point
of departure, or the turning road
that is departure and absence
and the way home? What we are
and what we were once

are far estranged. For those
who would not change, time
is infidelity. But we are married
until death, and are betrothed
to change. By silence, so,
I learn my song. I earn

my sunny fields by absence, once
and to come. And I love you
as I love the dance that brings you
out of the multitude
in which you come and go.
Love changes, and in change is true.

Advent Daily Devotional: BIRTHDAY of CHRIST: Day 28-Sat, Dec 25-Christmas Day

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… It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them. — Isaiah 63:9

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. — James 1:17

The Lord is God, and he has given us light. — Psalm 118:27

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Light the final, fifth candle. Doing so, welcome Emmanuel—God with Us— into the world and into your life.

            Godself is the holy source of love and light. Yet each person bears that light on behalf of the One who lived among humans, died as a human, and returned beyond death itself to meet you where you are on your own journey. Across centuries, your spiritual ancestors have taught that your hands and feet, your heart and mind, your acts and words embody and reflect the life of Christ.

            In this imperfect, impermanent way, you carry holy light within you. Perhaps, by itself, your light is small in scale. Yet it changes the darkness and creates a point of focus and transformation. Then your singular light connects with others, multiplying its energy and effect.           

            The final candle you light on Christmas Day is an echo of the first and eternal light from which all other lights take their meaning and power. Thus God’s gift of love, reborn into the world, renewed in your heart, reawakened in your community, changes the world one light and one life at a time: beginning with you. Let it burn! — Rev Gail

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Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy.
Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.
Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful.
Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.
— Rob Bell

… the light is all. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Advent Daily Devotional: WEEK of LOVE: Day 27-Fri, Dec 24-Christmas Eve

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For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
— Psalm 86:5

Bless the Lord, light and darkness; sing praise to him
and highly exalt him forever. — Prayer of Azariah 1:48

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On the eve of holy love’s renewed arrival in the world, you prepare yourself. How do you get ready to welcome love at the door of your heart? Will you answer when it knocks on the threshold of your life? Will you hold up your own light in greeting? Or withdraw and wait for the One at the door to pass you by, hiding your light?

How could you possibly prepare for such an experience as holy agape love’s renewed arrival in the world and in your life? Perhaps simply by listening. Waiting. And setting aside any sense that you can do enough, or be enough, to earn such love and grace. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to pass a test or prove yourself.

 Ideally, you have chosen an ethical path, because you a follower of agape love’s Way. Optimally, you have lived out what you believe. And yet … humans always fall short. Can you ever deserve holy love’s presence? Not really. It’s a gift.

Part of the gift of grace is that holy love simply shows up. Even when it’s not reasonable. Not rational. Even when you cannot possibly deserve it or earn it.

Yet a gift is meaningless unless the one to whom it is offered says yes to receiving it. Will you say yes?

Amazingly, wonderfully, holy agape love chooses you, simply because you are a beloved child of God. This holy love accepts you and embraces you, just as you are. At the same time, this love believes in all you might yet become.

Are you ready? Probably not. Yet love is coming anyway. — Rev Gail

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Love is friendship that has caught fire.
It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence,
sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times.
It settles for less than perfection and
makes allowances for human weaknesses.— Ann Landers

At times our own light goes out and
is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude
of those who have lighted the flame within us.
— Albert Schweitzer

Advent Daily Devotional: WEEK of LOVE: Day 26-Thurs, Dec 23

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Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. — Psalm 85:10

… and you shall come here, and I will light in your heart the lamp of understanding. — 2 Esdras 14:25

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As you kindle the four primary candles that dance a circle around the final unlit candle—the long-awaited Christ candle—you are creating a network of light. You are preparing the way for the coming of ultimate light.

Agape, mentioned at the beginning of this week, is a holy love to which humans aspire, but which humans cannot actually attain.  Its nature is so inclusive and comprehensive, so absolutely gracious and abundantly overflowing, humans as individuals and even as communities seek to model that ideal. Yet over and over, humans also miss the mark.

Should you be discouraged because agape is a form of love you might admire, and yet not be able to fully reach, to holistically practice? Alone or in community?

What Jesus’ lesson of the Beatitudes taught his followers was that while you cannot touch Godself, or fully love Godself, you can choose to love what God loves. And God loves all people and all of creation.

Thus, to strive toward agape, you are invited to have compassion for and connection with the recipients of holy love: humanity, all living beings and elements of creation, as well as the fullness of creation itself. If such an aspiration overwhelms you, then take it step by step. Choose one cause or corner of creation, one stranger or one neighbor, one part of your local community, where you can act on the principles of love for others and creation, as a reflection of your love for Godself.

One light at a time, the world is changed. One life at a time, love moves through the world.

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The best love is the kind that awakens the soul;
that makes us reach for more,
that plants the fire in our hearts
and brings peace to our minds.
— Nicholas Sparks

We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path
without brightening our own. – Ben Sweetland

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