Valentine's Day 2018

Today is Valentine's Day. I love Valentine's Day. :)

Every year, on Valentine's Day, my mother sets out a special breakfast for her kids. It usually includes a little note, some candy, and something special like a juice box or individual yogurt cups for each kid. This year we each got white chocolate bears and some kind of peaches-and-cream breakfast cups that came with cellophane across the top, along with some raisins spelling out the words "I Love You" on a napkin.

I hope that I am able to love the people around me in my life half as much as my mother does in hers.

In celebration of this year's Valentine's Day, I am going to share some of my favorite quotes and poems about love:

1. "Love is never wasted for its value does not rest upon reciprocity." -C.S.Lewis

2.   Scaffolding

by Seamus Heaney, 1939 - 2013

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall

Confident that we have built our wall.

3. Sonnet 116

by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 

which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

4. "If I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more." - excerpt from Emma by Jane Austen

5.  Excerpt from As I Walked Out One Evening

by W. H. Auden

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'


6. "There is an instinct in a woman to love most her own child: and an instinct to make any child who needs her love, her own." -Robert Brault

7. "Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go." -unknown

8. Tell Me Why
Song by Pat Benatar / Sung to me often by my mother

Tell me why the stars do shine
Tell me why the ivy twines
Tell me why the sky's so blue
And then I'll tell you just why I love you
Because God made the stars to shine
Because God made the ivy twine
Because God made the sky's so blue
Because God made you, that's why I love you

9. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

10. "I love thee with a love that shall not die, til the sun grows cold and the stars grow old." -William Shakespeare

11. "It will be our love, not our opinions which will be our greatest contribution to the world." -Bob Goff

12. The Love of God
Hymn written by Fredrick M. Lehman

The love of God is greater far
  Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
  And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
  God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
  And pardoned from his sin.
  O love of God, how rich and pure!
  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
    The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
  And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
  On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
  All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
  And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
  And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
  Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
  Though stretched from sky to sky.

13. " 'Don't cross oceans for people who wouldn't cross puddles for you' No, Do it. Do cross oceans for people. Love people, all people. No conditions attached, no wondering whether or not they are worthy. Cross oceans, climb mountains. Life and love isn't about what you gain, it's about what you give." -Unknown

Happy Valentine's Day 2018!