peace, love, happiness & understanding 11/5/26
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding
November 5, 2026
Sending Out Love Vibes
Sending out Love Vibes (positive Love Vibes)
to all the creatures of the universe
—Larry Yes, from the song “Love Vibes”
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With our love, we could save the world…
—George Harrison, from the song “Within You Without You”
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Love’s in need of love today
Don’t delay
Send yours in right away
—Stevie Wonder
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Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time,
Love, sweet Love, was thought a crime.
—William Blake
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Love is the greatest force in the universe.
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Who loves not, knows not God; for God is Love.
1 John, 8:4
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In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less…
48
…whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud…
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass
—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”
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wake up, heart!
wake up, heart!
wake up and love everyone and every thing
love the unlovable
the unhappy old men who start the wars
the geniuses who collapse the economy
the heads of the big corporations who ruin the earth
they need love, too
why else would they do stuff like that?
we all want to love and be loved
we all need to love and be loved
love everything that moves
and everything that won’t budge
love the person who is reading or listening to this poem
you might start with the easy ones
passing dogs
laughing children
fluffy white clouds
all the spring flowers shouting “love me!”
practice on the easy ones
until you get so good at it that you accidentally love the weird and scary homeless people, the criminals, the people whose views differ from yours—before you have time to think about it
heart, you were born for love
mr. brain sometimes tells you not to
“don’t love that one,” he says, “that one doesn’t deserve it”
“don’t be a fool”
forgive mr. brain
he can’t help it
he’s always making distinctions between this and that
he needs a hug
you know better
you know that the thing to do is just to love
to wake up and love without limit
—from The Nonstop Love-In by Johnny Stallings
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In his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge was imitating an archaic style of ballad. An old guy grabs a young man on his way to a wedding, sits him down and tells him his story:
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?….
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner…
The ancient mariner tells the wedding guest how his ship was surrounded by ice, and how by following an albatross they were able to get into the open sea…
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s hollo!…
Unfortunately….
‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS…
After he kills the innocent bird of good omen, the ship is cursed and become becalmed.
Water, water everywhere
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink…
The sailors hang the dead bird around his neck. All 200 of his shipmates are slowly starving to death. Then, suddenly they all drop down. At this point the wedding guest gets scared. Don’t worry, the Mariner says to reassure him:
“This body dropt not down.”
So, that’s a relief. He’s not a damned soul, back from Hell. On the ship it’s still a terrible Hell realm with all those corpses. When he looks over the side of the boat all he sees is “a thousand slimy things.” He tries to pray. He can’t. But he keeps looking over the side of the boat. And as he looks, something happens:
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched the water-snakes—their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea…
With the help of a troop of blessed spirits, the ship sails back to his own country. A hermit shrives him, but from time to time he has to tell his tale to someone. The last thing he says to the Wedding Guest is:
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things, both great and small;
For the dear God Who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
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Reading recommendations…
…the whole poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
…two novels by Niall Williams: This Is Happiness and Time of the Child
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Love with all your heart—and be happy. This world is then a jewel. It is Paradise. Everything is here for your delight. Love all that is good and enjoy what you love. Love is our nature. When we love everyone and are loved by everyone we are happy.
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How could I desire to be other than what I am? I am infinitely prone to love and am infinitely lovely. What could be more glorious? O unspeakable Joy! What more could I wish for?
71
It is impossible not to love someone who loves you. Love is so amiable that it is irresistible. There is no defense against that arrow, nor any safeguard from that charm. What life would you lead? By what would you be guided? We must have something to live for. What would you choose? Why not live in blessedness? Why not live in love? You must live for something. What more glorious than infinite love? Where there is infinite love there is infinite treasure. Choose the friendliest paths that lead to love and joy. By love alone is life enjoyed, by love alone delighted in. Love is the essence of life. It is our true nature.
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Our nature requires that we love everyone and be grateful for all the gifts we have been given. Everyone is naturally amiable, and so all need to love and be loved and to take delight in it. This is our desire and our birthright. Our nature urges us to love. For without loving we are desolate and by loving we are filled with joy. By loving we expand and enlarge ourselves, and the more we love the more glorious we become.
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We are born for love—to love each other as naturally as the sun shines.
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As the sun warms us and quickens us with life, may boundless love for everyone enlighten us, cause us to see the greatness of our nature, give us the joy of Paradise, comfort and enflame us. Let us look so deeply into the world, into ourselves and into each other that we feel the oneness of everyone and everything. Let us shine like the sun and allow Love to make its home in our hearts—joyfully enjoying all the gifts we have been given.
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We are beguiled by what we see with our eyes. May we cherish the invisible gifts of understanding and of love. May our love shine brighter than the sun.
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We must let our goodness shine by loving everyone. Where suffering is greatest, love is most needed. Let us make this world a paradise by caring for each other.
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Let our love be as strong as death, and so deep that no waters may be able to drown it. O let it be ever endless and invincible! Let the length and breadth and height of our love for each other be without limit. Let undrainable fountains and immeasurable abysses be hidden in it. Let it be more vehement than flame, more abundant than the sea. The sun has shone from the beginning of the world to this very day; shall our love be intermittent? Let our love be a perpetual fire on the altar of our hearts.
—my versions of some of Thomas Traherne’s meditations
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A human being is part of the whole called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
—Albert Einstein
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13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians: 13
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My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
—Juliet, from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
—William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
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…Love, first learnèd in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immurèd in the brain,
But with the motion of all elements
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye.
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valor, is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx, as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute strung with his hair.
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were tempered with love’s sighs.
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire.
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear,
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women,
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
—Berowne, from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labors Lost, Act 4, Scene 3
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May all beings be happy.
May we live in peace and love.