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My fingers feather touch
Across your cheek gliding
Your lips on my face
Knowing heaven
Here on earth
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Your breath whispers
Against my neck
Hold me long enough
So love reaches
All of us
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Our words dance joy
In daylight starlight
Laughter jewels the air
With possibilities
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The talon grip
Of history’s wounds
Love’s newborn flesh
Old armor donned blinds
Insight hiding truth
But a moment
Love hopes
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If you want forgiveness brothers and sisters you’ve got to forgive
If you want love in your hearts you’ve go to love no hands asking
If you want someone holding you then do some holding of your own
If life was fair brothers and sisters we wouldn’t be where everything’s real
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If pain sadness tears your soul’s seams brothers and sisters breathe
If kneebuckling heartbreak shoots you down cold shoot love in return
If wounded hearts wound yours send kindness their way
If the choice is delivering a blow or offering a hug go with this last
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If like me you’ve been knocked down and blown out don’t give up now
If you’re tripping on shattered dreams rubble trust sunrise on the morrow
If you’re broken sad let the tears come breathe deep gentle and slow
If you think you’re nothing left think again you’re an angel I promise
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If you think you’re nothing you’re wrong I swear
If you’ve stopped hoping for tomorrow rise up and hope again
If you lost the magic child within open up and look again
If you’ve stopped dreaming then ratchet up and dream again
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Fully giving and accepting love is not always the easiest thing to do. It can be downright scary for understandable reasons given the rough sledding so many of us of have gone through in life. However, as far as I’m concerned to love and to be loved is life’s most precious gift. Especially love between people. I make a point of singling out love between people because, if you’ll permit me the use of a cliché (there’s a reason it is a cliché), love is everywhere. To wit, I love books, good writing. There are written passages so beautiful they bring me to tears; I’d hold them in my arms if I could. There’s music I love. Music so beautiful my heart beats faster and sweet-shiver chills run up and down my spine. And then, of course, nature herself. Nature is the whole of life and love is a part of the whole. Love is nature’s finest creation, the ability to give and receive love, its most singular reward.
For the so many of you (and I am in your number) whose hearts and souls are bruised and bloodied by love lost, by the absence of love, by the slings and arrows of those so damaged they’ve come to believe they are incapable of healthy love, by those so internally mangled and misshapen they are, in fact, cruel, I say to you, don’t lose hope. The wounds of history deserve only so much decision making power. Our histories teach us caution. Good. Yes. They teach us to have the patience to discover what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false. Good. Yes. But they do not deserve so much decision making power they make us shut down, enact the off switch.
So, my dear reader. Give yourself permission to love and receive love knowing that no love between people can be if we do not accept each other and ourselves for who we are. Again, no love between can be if we do not accept each other and ourselves for who we are.
And then there is this ineffable truth; you deserve to be loved and you deserve to give love. Perhaps in this moment you are unclear on this or don’t believe it. Perhaps you’ve been so thoroughly pulverized by the brutality in life you think it impossible. Perhaps you grapple with a combination of all of these. Well, I’ve got good news. Because it may feel impossible does not mean it is impossible, it means that’s how it feels. Because you may, at this moment, be unclear, does not mean clarity is not there for you to discover – it is. And because, right now, you don’t believe it does not mean it is not worthy of belief. Consider, for a few moments, the content of the last sentence which comes right now. This piece was written, with love, for you.
If you are loved, don’t miss it. Life happens to us whether we like it or not and though love may portend permanence, it is, sadly, not the overseer of life (unfair I know). But life, it seems to me, is not cut from a fabric beholden to anything but its very existence.
If you love, give it your all. I say this with one caveat; that you do not give it your all at the expense of giving up who you are. And who you are deserves respect. Know that. And if, now, as your eyes travel this page, you find that hard to belief, it is still true. Promise. We all lose sight of our value and worth from time to time, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Any truly loving connection between two people, no matter its form, two people in love, friends, siblings, parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, can only be healthy loving for both if each person can be who they are (really are) safely with the other.
Love is life’s greatest gift. Don’t miss it.
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Listen to this life it’s all yours too
Love this life with all its shifting shape movements
Dream the dreams you dare and breathe them in full
Love with all your might it is your right
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Listen to the occupy movers singing your freedom
Listen to the heartbeat of nature’s song it’s your song
Dream the impossible possible and breathe it in full
Love with all your might it is your right
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Listen to Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall
Listen to each season’s rhythm it is your all
Dream the chimes of freedom and breathe them full
Love with all your might it is your right
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Peter S. Kahrmann - Est. 1953 