An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Love in Prison” in COMMON GROUND (New York: Continuum, 1999), p. 103.
The more conscious of the true self we are, the more we see our attitude to others change in the way we live out our relationship with them. Fear diminishes, generous love grows; reactive anger yields to the wisdom of forgiveness; judgementalism is absorbed by patience. In place of the control and manipulation which, in the ego’s eyes, makes the world go round, an amazing freedom is glimpsed as a real possibility in human affairs: the freedom that arises when people let each other be who they are.
After meditation: “The Sun Never Says” by Hafiz in LOVE POEMS FROM GOD: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, ed. and tr. by Daniel Ladinsky (New York: Penguin Compass, 2002), p. 170.
THE SUN NEVER SAYS
Even
after
all this time
the sun never says to the
earth,
“You owe me,”
Look
what happens
with a love like that—
it lights the whole
world.
Photo by Nanda Dian Pratama on Unsplash
