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

How Love Trumps Hate – A Poem and Photograph

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, Inspiration, Wisdom, Writing

Why Do You Write?

This quote resonates with me.

Quote on Writing-Audre Lorde. www.alvaradofrazier.com
Quote on Writing-Audre Lorde. http://www.alvaradofrazier.com

In my blog bio, I say something similar about the type of fiction I write for young adults and adults.

In my youth, violence, gangs, and drugs surrounded my neighborhood. During my adult career in juvenile justice and corrections, the same issues were part of my daily life, but I was on the other side.

When you live with violence, poverty, racism, fear, or trauma you can develop some coping mechanisms like acting out, repression and denial.

For many women, one of the coping strategies is silence. But when we stuff our thoughts, push the words down, stifle our voice in fear, we sometimes think we’re okay.

But we’re not.

Our feelings go somewhere deep into our muscles, into our blood, and into our soul, where we bury the pain under a facade of everything is fine, “don’t you see the smile on my face?”

That’s why I write. I tired of stuffing thoughts and reactions down into the corners of myself.

I tired of seeing others do the same thing, over and over again until their throat got so thick with unsaid words they would get sick, or develop masks, or self-medicate.

Write down your words, somewhere, anywhere. Let your pen flow with the unsaid things in your heart. Write through the fear, the terror, the uncomfortableness of the pain until you can’t breathe anymore, or the tears come and then write some more.

You will get to the other side.

That’s why I write.

Why do you write? When you leave a comment, please leave the name of your website so you can share your stories.

Thank you and enter September with an adventurous spirit.