TUESDAY, MARCH 21ST, 2023
“We are sinners and in need of mercy like the air we breathe. Willingness to convert – to allow ourselves to be purified, to change our lives – is a sign of courage, and of strength. Let us ask the grace to be surprised every day by God’s mercy and to see the various circumstances of life, even the ones that are the most difficult to accept, as occasions to do good.”
Pope Francis
It’s the birthday of poet Nizar Qabbani (books by this author), born in Damascus, Syria (1923). His mother, who was illiterate, sold her jewelry to raise money to publish his first anthology, Childhood of a Bosom (1948), and he went on to become the most popular Arab poet and to publish more than 20 books of poetry. Much of his poetry was influenced by the tragic deaths of two women he loved. When he was 15, his older sister committed suicide rather than be forced into marriage with a man she did not love, and he turned his attention to the situation of Arab women. He wrote romantic, sensual poems and poetry demonstrating the need for sexual equality and women’s rights. Many years later, in 1981, his second wife, an Iraqi woman, died during the Lebanese Civil War when the Iraqi Embassy was bombed. Qabbani was grief-stricken and frustrated with the political and cultural climate of the Arab world, and he lived in Europe for the rest of his life.
Qabbani said, “Don’t love deeply, till you make sure that the other part loves you with the same depth, because the depth of your love today, is the depth of your wound tomorrow.”
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 