Here we are, applauding love again in February, the fiercest, coldest month of the year. You would think we would celebrate Valentine’s Day in the spring when primroses burst open and light lengthens and love comes easily. I don’t know what you think about your weather, but temperatures in Philadelphia are plunging to the teens, wind gusts often reach 50 miles-an-hour, and icicles hang from our house like filthy beards. I, for one, am sick of winter. So much for sleigh bells and chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
And yet isn’t there something fitting about honoring St. Valentine in February, when the weather is so intemperate? Love begins as the most heady pleasure, but it eventually turns into the most essential and demanding task. As St. Paul pointed out, without love, life turns hollow. It sounds like the chink of a cash register, or the tinkle of yet another marketing phone call.
I’ve been thinking about Adam and Eve, the first lovers. They didn’t choose one another, exactly. God created Adam because He was lonely. And then, with typical insight, God noticed that Adam must be lonely, too. When Adam woke up to see the gorgeous woman God had created, he must have fallen deeply in love. But eventually Eve began to get on his nerves. When Adam blamed her for eating the apple, for them the weather turned to February.
They both had to start over, learning to love what they had been given.
“Adam’s Choice,” the poem from Helping the Morning that I’m sending this month, praises the power that can overcome raging winds and cold angers. I hope you will celebrate the with me the strange durability of love.
Consider giving your beloved some poetry for Valentines day. Here’s a link to Word Farm Press http://bit.ly/1412FzV
Wishing you love in February.
Jeanne |