Tag: love

Creativity, difficult times, Encouragement, Faith, Frank de Acosta, Inspiration, poetry

How Love Trumps Hate – A Poem and Photograph

Mona Alvarado Frazier
glass flask, alchemy, chemistry
Glass flask, photo by Marissa Anderson, flickr.com

 

Alchemy is an ancient practice shrouded in mystery. Its practitioners sought to turn lead into gold through a purification process involving heat.

The word “transformation” is a synonym for alchemy. So is “magic” and “power,” both which can describe love.

Love, an emotion, is also a quality we all need more of during these difficult times in our society.

This poem demonstrates the power of love, which trumps hate.

 

Alchemy of Love (Love trumps Hate)

Never lose grace in faith
Believing there is beauty
To be found in everyone
All of us at one time
Have walked in brokenness
Through the dark corridors
Of our hearts and minds
An empathetic kindness
Compassion without condition
Received from another
Can be the spark that turns
A lost, dark, wounded soul
Towards the healing of light
Mending frayed, fragile lives
Prayers reaching to embrace
The stranger as relation
Engenders the true power of love
I say this with humble gratitude
Knowing I have received love
Undeserved; given love, unrequited
We are called to walk a sacred manner
Believing there is alchemy in love

Reflection by: Frank de Jesus Acosta

This photo made the rounds on Facebook. Eric Gaines, a police officer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, was standing at a bus stop on March 1 when a teenage boy stopped to pray over a homeless man. The officer snapped this photo.

Eighteen-year-old Stephen Watkins said he was on a bus home from school when a song he was listening to inspired him to get off at an earlier stop in order to bless a complete stranger.

“I prayed for him. I said, ‘God right now you’re using me to bless this man,’” Watkins told WJZ-TV. “Thank you for showing me this song.”

teenager, young man, praying, homeless man
Teenager Praying for a Homeless Man; photo from Facebook.

Life can be difficult, sometimes devoid of sense verging on hopelessness. Let’s chose compassion and love to make life a little better in our tiny part of the world. Maybe, just maybe, that gesture will travel and touch someone’s life like this poem and photograph did for me. Keep the faith.

Encouragement, Hope, poetry

The Insanity of Hate-Poem

Mona Alvarado Frazier
alvaradofrazier.com
alvaradofrazier.com

 

Yesterday morning, CNN broadcast the first service at the Emanuel AME church. The Rev. Goff said:

 

“The blood of the Mother Emanuel Nine requires us to work until not only justice is served in this case, but for those who are still living on the margin of life.”

His quote is an attitude of love in the face of hatred.

The gunman said he was going to start a “race war,” to which the Rev. Goff addressed in his sermon:

“Lots of folks expected us to do something strange and break out in a riot,” Goff said.

“Well, they just don’t know us,” he said, as the congregation stood and cheered.

The tragedy of the Charleston shooting remained in my thoughts and showed up in a poem during the dead of night. 

The Insanity of Hate

Hate is an acid
erodes humanity,
dissolves innate morality.

Hate misshapes
eats away reason
from the slow drip of racism
fed by stereotypes
begat by fear, blame, otherness.

Hate eats the heart
throws up paranoia
irrational rationalized thoughts

Hate takes a gun
commits violence, destroys
turns world's upside down.

Hate is a four letter word
so is LOVE,
motivated by HOPE,
fueled by WORK,
for an end to violence.