Have you ever considered that God has love poems for you? What experiences could be messages of love from the Divine? How can you listen for whisperings from The One Who Loves You Into Existence (one of my favorite names for God)? The inner cynic is each of us would have us quickly dismiss these questions. Please don’t.

As children and adults across the country are preparing Valentines for their classmates and sending flowers and candy to loved ones, the holiday of love is a time to remember that Love is breaking through all the time…every day, every moment.

A few years ago,  I came across Daniel Ladinsky’s Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West. An assortment of writings from saints and mystics from eastern and western spiritual traditions, it includes “love poems” from writers such as St. Francis of Assisi, Rumi, St. Catherine of Siena, and Hafiz. It rattled my sensibilities (a good sign, by the way). In his introduction, Ladinsky writes, “Words about God should never bore because God is the opposite of boring.”

Since discovering this book, I’ve been increasingly intrigued with remembering God’s love as an essential dimension of Valentine’s Day. We can celebrate by taking a moment to be grateful for the deep, ever-present, creative love that is at work in ways that we can’t even imagine.

Here is a short love poem for you from Ladinsky’s book that will likely expand your image of the Divine.

“I won’t take no for an answer,”

God began to say

to me

when He opened His arms each night

wanting us to

dance.

~ St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

Wishing you all the best dancing.

Love, Mabeth

Source: Ladinsky, Daniel. Love Poems from God: Twelve Voices From the East and West. New York, NY: Penguin, 2002.