Dearest Reader,

Please accept, as token of our undying affection, this collection of music, poetry, essays, and fiction: all about love, and just in time for Valentine’s Day!

How do I love thee?

“One who has loved is never quite alone” – Jane Tyson Clement

The essential singleness of blood and bone
when dispossessed, comes never in return.

“And the Twain Shall Be One” – Philip Britts

I felt the hidden challenge of beauty as a power
and then it was your word, your look, that woke and filled the hour.

“I cannot love what you are” – Patrizia Cavalli

But there is in you a grace that surpasses
what you obstinately are.

If music be the food of love…

Love in Haydn’s Creation – Marianne Wright

Haydn imagines the very first love duet, between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, their bass and soprano voices weaving in wonderful harmony.

Love Knocks at our Hearts –Marianne Wright

Listen to Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s Wandrers Nachtlied:

And love knocks at our hearts in its quiet way,
It knocks and knocks until our hearts are unlocked.

Love in Real Life

A Love Extraordinary – Emmy von Hollander and Eberhard Arnold

In love, engaged, but in two different towns, and with two years to wait till their wedding, a young couple kept romance, and faith, alive in spirited correspondence.

Love in a Leper Colony – Johann Christoph Arnold

When they were married, Maria and Damien were under no illusions. But, fifty years later, their love was even stronger: a story of faithfulness.

Love in Longform

What Is Marriage For? – N. T. Wright

Marriage is a sign of all things in heaven and on earth coming together in Christ. That’s why it is a tough calling.

The Beautiful Institution – Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

“When a man and woman turn to one another in a bond of faithfulness, God robes them in garments of light, turning the prose of biology into the poetry of the human spirit, redeeming the darkness of the world by the radiance of love.”

Love Divine and Human – Eberhard Arnold

“No one can live without love. A person without love is aging and dying; in truth, such a person is already dead.”