The power of sex, with its obvious link to fertility and the instinctive connections to love, exaltation and submission, is understood by every religion. It's exploited by some, isolated -- and perhaps feared -- by others.
But … maybe this is too vast a topic for our Valentine’s Day. Better, I think, to share a fragment of poetry that is one of the finest expressions of love, whether of God or among men and women, that I have ever read.
It was written by the still-famous 13th-century Muslim poet and mystic Jelaluddin Rumi:
The way of love is not
a subtle argument.
The door there
is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling
they’re given wings.
From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson. Castle Books, 1995.
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