A quote from the book I just finished:
“In all the many definitions that we have read of love, perhaps one of my favorites is the one that holds: to love is to know by heart the song another’s heart sings and to sing it back to them on the days when they forget how it goes” (Eileen Lindner in Thus Far on the Way: toward a theology of child advocacy“.
Anyone who knows me well would know that I struggle with really knowing what “love” is beyond the superficial attempts at it. There’s a scene in the movie Mulan where the Dragon is called a lizard and he says, “I’m a dragon…drag…on. I don’t do that tongue thing.” Well, I’ve been known to say, “I don’t do that love thing.”
But this quote stood out to me and inspired the following poem (beware…it’s a tad more “touchy feely” than my usual stuff):
Does my heart have a song that someone else knows
Do I hum a tune and say, “this is how it goes”?
Am I open to love in whatever form it comes,
Or when I hear someone humming, do I run?
Does my heart have a tune that’s playing on loop–
That says to the world, “wanna know me? Here’s the scoop”?
Do I hear a choir and join in that song?
Do I really believe I belong in the throng?
More than that…
Do I listen for the song in someone else’s heart?
Do I sing a tune back and say, “Remember? Here’s your part”?
Or do I try not to listen, lest I hear too much
You know–pain, vulnerability, dreams and such?
To love is to know how another’s heart sings.
To know another’s heart–that’s the thing.
I think I can finally say my heart has a tune–
A tune I’d like to hear hummed sometime soon.