“Love is the funeral pyre

Where the heart must lay its body.”

– Hafiz.

Sometimes, when I am out working with Red, I see my life as a painting, or rather, as a series of paintings, it makes life timeless for me and reminds me that I am small and humble, my troubles are a microscopic speck in the universe. We all laugh, cry, suffer, love and die. It is the thing that binds us together and makes us one thing, not a thing of the left or a thing of the right, or a Christian or Jew.

When we forget this bond, we fall into argument, disconnection, spiritual emptiness, hatred and anger. It does not seem to be in our nature to remember this or keep it in mind, it is left to the quiet pleadings of the people on the edge, on the margins, that is always where the spiritual people seem to be, pushed aside by the loud, the political, the enraged. In the pasture with Red, I think of Hafiz and his wonderful poem, and I turn myself over to the pursuit of love and meaning,  they are the funeral pyre on which my body lies.