The Love a Life Can Show Below

(Still Life by Jacob Collins, born 1964, American painter)

“To love our neighbor as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all the modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of it.”

~ Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher and Christian mystic

The Love a Life can show Below
Is but a filament, I know,
Of that diviner thing
That faints upon the face of Noon —
And smites the Tinder in the Sun —
And hinders Gabriel’s¹ Wing —

’Tis this — in Music — hints and sways —
And far abroad on Summer days —
Distils uncertain pain —
’Tis this enamors in the East —
And tints the Transit in the West
With harrowing Iodine —

’Tis this — invites — appalls — endows —
Flits — glimmers — proves — dissolves —
Returns — suggests — convicts — enchants —
Then — flings in Paradise —

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet

¹ Gabriel – the archangel