Write here!: Valentine's Day

Such a gorgeous day today, warm and sunny and the sound of birds outside the window. I'm feeling full of the joys of Spring!

A Valentine's Day post as promised ...

I was going to write a post about the history and traditions of Valentine's Day, because I have come across some interesting things about it over the past couple of days. For example:

Valentine's Day has been linked to the mating season of birds since Chaucer's poem in honour of the engagement between Richard II and Anne of Bohemia:

"For this was on St. Valentine's Day,

When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate."

February the 14th was declared as St. Valentine's Day by Pope Gelasius in the fifth century, recasting the Roman festival of Lupercalia as a Christian feast day. According to UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, it was Chaucer who first linked St. Valentine's Day with romance.

It's unclear which Valentine was honoured by Pope Gelasius. Legend has it that Valentine was a man imprisoned in the third century. He may have been a man imprisoned for helping Christians, or he may have been a priest. He may have been a priest who refused to give up his Christian faith. Or he may have been imprisoned because he defied orders not to conduct marriages.

Whoever Valentine was, the legend is that he fell in love with the jailor's daughter, and on the day of his execution, he passed her a note, signed:

... from your Valentine.

For more fascinating facts about Valentine's day, including customs from around the world, the origins of Valentine's Day symbolism, and stories of history's greatest romantics, have a look at these:

History

Brownielocks

Annie's Valentine Page

From the Middle Ages, a Valentine was a simple message of love and affection.

So, I have decided, as my Valentine to you, to share a little more of my lovely 'I Hope You Dance' Journal.

The beautiful song lyrics are on the first page (on my last post), but I hadn't realised there are more messages hidden among the scary blank pages!

I've only included one picture, as it took me two hours to upload the pictures on here! And I won't write all the words, but I hope these make you smile ...

The second page says:

This is your journal, for your journey ...

There are some people in this world who wouldn't know what to do with all this space. But that's not you. And there are some people who wouldn't want to reveal or dig down deep or talk about what scares them. But that's not you either.

You're a dancer ...

You really don't have to be careful about what you write.

Maybe someday some unborn grandchildren will find this book in a box in a trunk in an attic.

Maybe they'll see that you weren't perfect ... and love you more for it. Maybe they'll discover some secrets ... and feel closer to you. Maybe they'll feel a little more related, understand themselves a little more, know where they're going just a little better. Is that so bad?

No, no, and no! And please don't tell me you'll start tomorrow.

Pick up a pen (pencils have erasers - your life doesn't) right now and ...

Followed by blank pages. A little further in the journal:

It's my turn again.

Don't worry, I haven't read what you've written.

I'm just here to ask how deep you've been digging, if you're finding teasures

that prove you're alive and human like the rest of us.

I hope you've been asking the questions and not expecting the answers. I hope you've been thinking and thriving, wondering, trusting, crying, laughing, offering, yearning.

Yeah, and dancing.

And I hope life's been treating you fair, although it surely doesn't have to. And if it hasn't, I hope you've been writing down those troubles and travails. Because if you deny or hide or stuff all those sharp edges down, they're just going to keep cutting. But if you deal (some might say duel) with them, and put them in their place, and tell them,

"You are not going to haunt me,"

they'll give up.

Troubles are stubborn, but you must be a little stubborn too or else you wouldn't still be here.

That's why I like you.

A little further on, there's a message about mountains:

There's always another mountain. That's what makes life thrilling and you breathless.

There are days, there are times, when you feel like you've walked so far, when the voice inside you is complaining that it's all uphill, that it always will be.

And then, after all that way, beyond the blue horizon,

you see the biggest mountains you've ever seen and you think,

"I can't do that."

Well, I hope you always have somebody who tells you that you can.

Like I'm telling you now.

Almost at the end of the book is a final message:

Will you promise me something?

When you get to the last page of this book, don't stop. No, don't stop there.

Think of it as one of those mountains.

Bask in your accomplishment for a little bit.

Look back on all you've been through ... on all you've survived, on how you've thrived.

Then go out and get another book, another mountain.

And write about your dance.

You know you're a great dancer, don't you?

So, with thanks to the lovely Womag, for reminding me of my journal, for giving me a reason to go and get it out and look at it properly, in response to her fab Vibrations post, I pass these warm fuzzies on to you, because you are all much admired and much appreciated ...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Love is life.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.
-Leo Tolstoy

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I walked into the kitchen yesterday and found a heart on the floor! A ribbon from something or other had fallen on the floor and somehow landed in a heart shape:

Perhaps it's an omen ...