Love is everything. It’s everywhere. It is priceless and free and available for us all. It is not scarce, and it will not be diminished or pigeon-holed. I hope you embrace the love that’s already yours today.
Here are some quotes that I adore and want to share with you on this day dedicated to love. They are as varied and beautiful as we are.
From a discussion with my sons about weddings, 5 years ago:
J's Marriage Vows: Oh, hello Oh, hello You're so beautiful I love you I love you Let's go to the celebration After the celebration you and me are going to the car. Z's Marriage Vows: Marry!
From me:
Today I am calling you to remember by rehearsing who you are. Beloved. Cared for. Significant to your very core. And very much loved as a child of God.
I only have one point: you are a gift uniquely fashioned through both heaven and earth—you are a life forged by God’s stubborn will and the survival of your ancestors. Put some respect on your name.
Gwendolyn Brooks “To Don at Salaam” (Part of “Young Heroes”)
I like to see you lean back in your chair so far you have to fall but do not— your arms back, your fine hands in your print pockets. Beautiful. Impudent. Ready for life. A tied storm. I like to see you wearing your boy smile whose tribute is for two of us or three. Sometimes in life things seem to be moving and they are not and they are not there. You are there. Your voice is the listened-for music. Your act is the consolidation. I like to see you living in the world.
June Jordan “I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies: Part I”
I will no longer lightly walk behind a one of you who fear me: Be afraid. I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits and facial tics I will not walk politely on the pavement anymore and this is dedicated in particular to those who hear my footsteps or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery cart then turn around see me and hurry on away from this impressive terror I must be: I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon surrounded by my comrades singing terrible revenge in merciless accelerating rhythms But I have watched a blind man studying his face. I have set the table in the evening and sat down to eat the news. Regularly I have gone to sleep. There is no one to forgive me. The dead do not give a damn. I live like a lover who drops her dime into the phone just as the subway shakes into the station wasting her message cancelling the question of her call: fulminating or forgetful but late and always after the fact that could save or condemn me I must become the action of my fate.
Georgia Douglas Johnson, “I Want to Die While You Love Me” (a song)
I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips And lights are in my hair. I want to die while you love me, And bear to that still bed, Your kisses turbulent, unspent, To warm me when I'm dead. I want to die while you love me, Oh, who would care to live Till love has nothing more to ask And nothing more to give! I want to die while you love me And never, never see The glory of this perfect day Grow dim or cease to be.
From Sojourner Truth’s Speech “Ain’t I A Woman?”
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it. The men better let them.
Audre Lorde, from Sister Outsider
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
From James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.
From bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.
From Song of Songs 2 (The Message Version)
As an apricot tree stands out in the forest,
my lover stands above the young men in town.
All I want is to sit in his shade,
to taste and savor his delicious love.
He took me home with him for a festive meal,
but his eyes feasted on me!
Oh! Give me something refreshing to eat—and quickly!
Apricots, raisins—anything. I’m about to faint with love!
His left hand cradles my head,
and his right arm encircles my waist!
Oh, let me warn you, sisters in Jerusalem,
by the gazelles, yes, by all the wild deer:
Don’t excite love, don’t stir it up,
until the time is ripe—and you’re ready.
From Jesus (in John 15, CEB)
This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends.
For Valentine's Day 2023
Thank you for curating such good words. Our words.
Oh my goodness, J’s marriage vows. LOVE.