My good friend Gabriel Uhlein OSF sent me this poem yesterday. It is a lovely expression of what we are facing as we continue in lockdown and stay-at-home protocols. I am daily more aware of all
who are so much more worse off than I am and I send here the only thing I can send: blessing, warmth, prayer and intention:
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And
whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter
whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
~ Czeslaw Milosz, New & Collected Poems 1931-2001