Common Love
Common Love
Dear Master of Love,
where does love live
when the world is at war?
Where it has always lived, dear ones.
Where is that?
In every life that still refuses
to abandon another.
Before the morning finds its name
Someone rises, tends a flame
An extra chair, an open door
A little given becomes much more
A name is learned, a burden shared
A lamp left burning:
“You are cared for”
No cameras turn, no banners wave
But love is how the day gets made
Can something quiet hold the world?
What else has ever done it?
Common love!
Common love!
Quiet as the morning, moving underneath us
Ordinary hands,
uncommon trust
The world is held together by common love!
From hand to hand, from trust to trust
Across the lines dividing “them” from “us”
No flags, no fame,
no names above
Still we are here because of common love!
The headlines count the wounds and walls
They name the sides and sound the calls
Still, a stranger lifts a stranger’s child
And bread goes where the flags divide
Two neighbors pray in different words
And recognize the same old hurt
We are more alike than we are told
When fear lets go and hands take hold
If love is common,
why does hatred speak so loudly?
Because fear must shout
to make a stranger of your kin.
And love?
Love sits beside us
until we remember.
Love may never make the headlines
Or take a victor’s name
But every time we choose each other
The world begins again
Common love!
Common love!
Quiet as the morning, moving underneath us
Ordinary hands, uncommon trust
The world is held together by common love!
From hand to hand, from trust to trust
Across the lines dividing “them” from “us”
No flags, no fame, no names above
Still we are here because of common love!
The soil receives what leaves release
And turns surrender into feast
The roots pass water through the night
The smallest mouths prepare new life
The flower opens for the bee
The forest breathes itself through me
No kingdom rises on its own!
And nothing living can live alone!
Are they all our relations?
Were they ever anything else?
Then what did we forget?
That belonging is not dominion.
How do we remember?
Listen to what keeps you alive!
All our relations, root and wing
The lives we see and the unseen
The fur, the fin, the seed, the stone
No living thing survives alone
From soil to soul, one woven whole
The rain, the river, blood and bone
Not ours to conquer, not ours to own
We live because we all belong!
What are we?
Earth in body, world in heart.
Where do we end?
No life begins or lives apart.
Who are our kin?
All our relations!
What must we save?
What we save may save us all.
And what must we do?
Carry what has carried you.
What has carried us?
Common love!
Common love!
Common love!
Rising like the morning all around us
Ordinary hands,
uncommon trust
The world is held together by common love!
All my relations, every root and wing
One life moving through every living thing
From soil to soul,
from dust to us
We belong to one another in common love!
Across every border, beneath every sun
Many hearts, many voices—none of us alone!
Older than the names that separate us
The world survives because of common love!
What holds us now?
What carries us?
We belong to one another
We belong to every other
We belong to Earth, our mother
In common love!
And those who gave
but thought that no one saw?
To every soul who loved unseen:
your gifts shall be received.
Where does their light go now?
Into you, dear ones.
Carry it on
Carry it on
Carry what has carried us
Carry common love
Common Love!
Common Love!
Common Love!