Time for a poetry break! This beautiful reading is one of my all-time favorites for weddings. An excerpt from Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières:
“Love is a temporary madness;
it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.
And when it subsides you have to make a decision.
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion.
That is just being in love, which any fool can do.
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,
and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground,
and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches,
they find that they are one tree and not two.”
Besides being wonderful for weddings, the poem also strikes me as perfect in a larger sense for spring and the holidays honoring renewal (Passover, Easter and Ramadan), for Enchanted April, for the trees whose gradual yet abrupt change I am privileged to watch daily.
I took the photo of the dogwood tree in my mom’s backyard a few days ago, when it was in full bloom. Now, many of the blossoms have blown away in the fierce winds… revealing not bare branches… but new green leaves.
When we lose something, how easy it can be to focus on the lost thing.
What if we focus instead on what is now revealed?
In the space created by the losing, what now has room to grow?
What is being revealed as our own fleeting, fragile blossoms blow away?
Namaste ~ Blessed Be
