Love, love, love! An OpenSpirit Sunday Evening
October 18, 2009; 7 – 8 pm; Performing Arts Center of MetroWest
“Love, love, love: all you need is love!” So sang the bard among us, reminding us of what we all know: that love is the heart of what makes us human. 
It is the theme of songwriters through the ages, the story-line that shapes novels and films with a beguiling beauty. It’s not always easy, of course. In its complications, it brings not only laughter but also tears to us. In all this it surely ranks as the greatest of the “ordinary miracles” we come to know in our lives.
And know it we do, as a power at once fragile and holy, one sanctified but also complicated by desire. It is “strong as death, and passion fierce as the grave,” as one ancient Hebrew poet put it; “many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”
This week, we will give ourselves to the miracle of human love, and see how it is celebrated in scripture and song, ancient and modern. It is the poet’s great theme, and ours. Love fires the story we find in the “Song of Songs,” that un-religious jewel at the heart of the Bible. In anticipation of our gathering, find time to read and meditate on this text, especially ch. 2. Who is this unnamed lover who knows herself as “a lily of the valleys”? And who does she extol as the “apple tree among all the forest’s trees”? 
This week, we’ll celebrate love in all its longings. We’ll hear from this love-song in scripture, and from other love songs penned by more recent poets and bards. Bring one of your own favorites to share as we celebrate the “ordinary miracle” of love in all its passion and beauty.
My heart’s love
came down to his garden,
to the bedding of spice,
to meander in his garden
and to browse among the lillies.
I am my beloved’s
and he is mine.
He feeds among these lillies. (Song of Songs 6. 2 – 3)