Love Will Not Lose

By Steven Charleston

Love will not lose.

Even if the evidence of the daily news
Seems to suggest that it will
Even if we despair of the values we thought we shared
Even if we imagine the divisions between us
Have grown too wide:

Love will not lose.

Love cannot be constrained by legal walls
Political pieties or institutional fear.
Love is the subversion of power by mercy.
It is the uncontrolled spirit of hope
That erodes the authority of oppression.

Love is the human soul made visible.
Once we see it in one another’s eyes
No force on earth can compel us to deny its reality.
No matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes

Love will not lose.

– Steven Charleston
in Spirit Wheel: Meditations
from an Indigenous Elder
Broadleaf Books, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• When We Choose Love
• Until the Light Returns
• What the Wind Says
• Secret Language of the Heart
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love”
• Our Lives as LGBTQI People: “Garments Grown in Love”
• In Australia, “Love Has Had a Landslide Victory”
• “What I Want to Remember Are the Moments of Love”
• A Light That Will Always Shine
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• A Sacred Pause
• Susan Raffo: Quote of the Day – September 11, 2012
• To Be Alive Is to Love
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Ilia Delio
• In the Garden of Spirituality – James B. Nelson

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Until the Light Returns

By Steven Charleston

If this is a difficult time for you or someone you know
Let me speak a clear word straight to your heart:
There is no trouble stronger than the love of the Spirit.

There is no illness, no broken relationship.
No financial setback, no personal hurt
That the love of the Spirit cannot heal.
Not even death can overcome it.

That love is for you.
It may come to you as you read these words
Or it may take time, but it will come to you.

The assurance, the comfort,
The renewal of a love that will embrace you
And hold you and abide with you,
Until the light returns and departs no more.

– Steven Charleston
in Spirit Wheel: Meditations
from an Indigenous Elder
Broadleaf Books, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• What the Wind Says
• Aligning With the Living Light
• The Source Is Within You
• Like the Sun
• Be Just in My Heart
• The Light Within
• Shining On
• Honoring the Darkness While Remembering the Light
• A Living Light
• A Light That Will Always Shine

Image: Artist unknown.

What the Wind Says

By Steven Charleston

Listen to the wind. It has something to tell you.
Whether it is as quiet as the current
That lifts the hawk to circle the sky
Or as loud as the storm chasing high waves to shore:
The wind has something to say.

There is a word for each of us, a message sent directly
That flows through the wind each day
Offering us insight and vision, clarity and creative ideas
If only we will stop long enough to receive it.

Be still. Be awake. Trust your spiritual senses.
Listen to the wind. The Spirit is speaking to you.

– Steven Charleston
in Spirit Wheel: Meditations
from an Indigenous Elder
Broadleaf Books, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Two Exceptional Singers Take a Chance on the “Spirit of the Wind”
• Resilience and Hope
• Trusting the Flow
• A Season of Listening
• To Be Still
• Today I Will Be Still
• Cultivating Stillness
• Eckhart Tolle on Silence and Stillness
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• Secret Language of the Heart
• Come, Spirit

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Secret Language of the Heart

By Steven Charleston

I know the secret language of the heart
How it speaks in whispers about the pain it has known

How it talks of loves lost and dreams deferred,
The wordless memories of a lifetime

Sharing a story that cannot be contained by words
But expressed only in the sound of rain.

It is the collective sound of all those voices
All those stories, all those moments of joy
That I seek to raise up to the listening skies

To hold up as high as I can in prayer
That the angels of the night will hear us
All of us with the dignity of our own story

And know that we are still here, still together
Still doing what we can to make hope have meaning.

Keep speaking the poetry of the heart.
I am listening. Many of us are listening.
We do not need language to tell the same story.

– Steven Charleston
in Spirit Wheel: Meditations
from an Indigenous Elder
Broadleaf Books, 2023

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• In the Abode of the Heart
• The Way of Love and Healing
• Be Just in My Heart
• Adnan and the Winged Heart

Image: Artist unknown.