Celebrate This Week

This week I’ve been celebrating love.

• On Saturday, I found a skinny poem in the words of 1 Corinthians 13.

Love

Greatest of all is
love
kindly
patiently
enduring.
Love
hopes
believes
forgives.
Love
is greatest of all.

(Back story is below in Writing about my writing.)

• On Sunday evening, eighteen of us gathered around our big table for a family birthday celebration; BN turned ten.

• On Tuesday, I enjoyed a country drive and late afternoon lunch with my husband. It was a cloudless day and Mt. Hood smiled on us in all its majesty.

• Wednesday was Valentine’s Day, filled with special I-love-you’s from far and near.

• Friday, I wrote “Colors”  –a plea to not be judged.

• All week, I’ve been basking in the warmth of a special word: beloved.
  It’s an old-fashioned word.
  Used as an adjective.
  Meaning? Dearly loved.
  Message to me?  I am beloved.
  Message to you: You are beloved.

We– you and I –are dearly loved!

And I’ve been soaking up Jordan Feliz’s You Are Beloved! 

Head full of questions, how can you measure up?
To deserve affection, to ever be enough
For this existence
When did it get so hard?
Your heart is beating, alive and breathing
And there’s a reason why
You are essential, not accidental
And you should realize

(Chorus)
You are beloved
I wanted you to know
You are beloved
Let it soak into your soul
Oh, forget the lies you heard
Rise above the hurt
And listen to these words
You are beloved
I want you to know
You are beloved
You are beloved
More…

Writing about my writing.

I am participating with about 100 other writers of poetry in Lauren Shovan’s 6th Annual February Poetry Project. We are to write a ekphrastic poem  based on a piece of art one of our members posts. The purpose of the challenge is to practice writing, every day. Our poems are still works in progress.  I shared several of my poems last week: Poetry Challenge : Week 1.

On Day 9, someone posted a “skinny poem.” I followed the link to learn more and was intrigued by the form.

*Skinny poem form: Exactly 11 lines; line one can be several words, but short is best; lines 2 through 10 are one word each; lines 2, 6, and 10 must repeat; line 11 must use the same words as line 1 but they can be in a different order. Read more about the origin here.  (This is an extra celebration of learning.)

On Day 10, Carol Varsalona gave us our prompt, a lovely antique print of a young women holding a baby, “Bud of Love.”

I pondered the print. First I thought about the woman in the print. Is she the baby’s mother? Or perhaps the baby’s aunt? Is the baby a girl or a boy? Should I write of a mother’s hopes and dreams?  The possibilities seemed endless. Then I thought, it is all about love. I will write about love. But love is such a vast subject. And I only have a brief amount of time. Again, the possibilities seemed endless.

While thinking like this, I had a flashback.
One of the requirements in my senior literature course in high school was to memorize powerful passages from literature. My teacher said there are some passages in literature that are worth keeping with us to live life. I Corinthians 13 was one of those passages. My teacher said I Corinthians it is the greatest love passage in literature. And so, many years ago, I memorized it — in the Old King James Version.

Taking the skinny poem form and the words of 1 Corinthians 13, I began to write–

Celebrate this Week
with Ruth Ayres
#Celebratelu.