The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
It was the boy at baggage claim who started it.
His elation! Each time a new bag would drop,
he would point at the suitcase and squeal,
then turn to his grandmother with incandescent delight.
His grandmother deepened my joy. How she beamed
at her grandson, praised him in Spanish, her words
a bright blur I interpreted more through hunch
than through certainty. And sooner than you’d think,
I fell in love with every single person at baggage claim sixteen.
Didn’t need to know their stories to know
they were worthy of love. Everyone a grandchild.
Everyone a light. It was like, how on these midsummer
nights, the late sun shines long though the cities and fields
and everything, every whole and broken thing, is beautiful.
Oh, people of Iran. Israel. Palestine. Ukraine.
Russia. Somalia. Yemen. America. I will never know you,
yet I honor how you carry inside you your own strange
and beautiful spark. Each of us longs to belong.
No matter what our leaders do, the light is right
to see how much we all long to be safe, to be seen,
to be kind, to be trusted, to meet on any street,
in any room, all of us slivers of divinity.
Every one a light, and worthy of love. Imagining that statement appearing on every national flag.
yes! I am imagining it!
Oh, yes.
oh yes ❤️
A balm for a weary world, right here.
Oh friend, it was so sweet how it started, how it continued (continues) to unfold …
Baggage claim #16 and the 4th and Walnut (T. Merton),it must be true. A deep bow of thanks for helping me remember!
Someone just sent me the 4th and Walnut piece, which I hadn’t read before, but yes! That is it!
You are so gifted. A deep bow.
Thank you, Susan, thank you ❤️ A bow to what comes through us that is so much more than we are …
Amen!
Thank you, Susan!