Hadewijch: Love's constancy

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Love's constancy

by Hadewijch
(13th Century) Timeline

English version by
Oliver Davies

Original Language
Dutch

Anyone who has waded
Through Love's turbulent waters,
Now feeling hunger and now satiety,
Is untouched by the season
Of withering or blooming,
For in the deepest and most dangerous waters,
On the highest peaks,
Love is always the same.

-- from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield

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Themes

Lotus

Rose

Spring Blossom

Water

Recommended Books

	Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies throughout the Ages, by Ursula King
	Hadewijch: The Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality) , by Mother Columba Hart
	Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, by Bernard Mcginn
	Sacred Voices: Essential Women's Voices Through the Ages, Edited by Mary Ford-Grabowsky
	The Shambhala Anthology of Women's Spiritual Poetry, Edited by Aliki Barnstone

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I rather like this poem by Hadewijch. In a few short lines it suggests the nondualist perspective that the Divine, in the form of Love, is eternally the same, no matter what extremes are experienced on the surface of reality.

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