I am a big fan of William Shakespeare’s writing. I’ve been a fan since I was 9 years old and I fell in love with Zeferrelli’s movie version of Romeo & Juliet. It seems hard for me to believe now, but I saw the film 9 times when I was 9 years old!
I loved the beauty of the language, and the power of Love to heal the deep sense of separation that existed in “fair Verona” between the Montague’s and Capulets.
I have always loved the beauty in Shakespear’s sonnet 116 – a clear and powerful statement about Love:
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Love is not changeable or fickle or conditional. What is changeable is not Love. We don’t fall in and out of Love. The ego believes in falling in and out of Love. Love is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It’s a joy to Love without conditions – and it is not the way of the world. It is the way of the Spirit which is not of this world. It is our way for we are in the world, but not of it. Thank God!
