"There is an irresistible calling in us that we often mistake for human love. Yet in the heart of a mystic—and I believe we are all mystics in waiting—there is an intense longing for union with the beloved. And this longing calls through our bodies—deep down into our soul—for answer. In this longing begins the play between the soul and the Divine that inspires this book."

This is a book about divine rapture. It is not an historical work, though it is laced with oblique references to the lives of Saint Clare and Saint Francis, who lived in the thriving hilltop town of Assisi in Italy at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Yet it is not a work of fiction, but an evocation that pays homage to the evolving relationship between two beings of spirit and their growing sense of Cosmic belonging.

Clare and Francis shares the common cause of all mystic encounters in which small ego rubs up against the Divine. The sparks that fly from such encounters are what impassioned the author of the Song of Solomon and fired the hearts of spiritual giants such as Mirabai, Rabindranath Tagore, Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, Rumi, Haffiz, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

The Conversations of Divine Love that evolve become a deep dialogue between souls who each see in the soul of the other the Divine Lover after whom they yearn. Both transcend their ego states by reading onto, into and through their passion to an ecstatic state. This is what the mystic comes to understand: the Divine yearns for us as much as we yearn for It!

Table of Contents

Preface

Canto 1: Love’s Troubadours
Canto 2: The Wings of Love
Canto 3: Bold Love and Greedy
Canto 4: Hot Love and Cool
Canto 5: The Company of Lovers
Canto 6: The Will of Love
Canto 7: The Marks of Love
Canto 8: Two Specks of Love

Epilogue
  Francis’s Song
  Clare’s Song

Excerpt

Brother,
my love burns hot
and your voice fans the flame;
my soul, like the polished waters
of the woodland pool,
loses its tranquil surface
when I hear your
hot words of love.

Sister,
your song strikes
the drum of my heart
like summer thunder
in the mountains,
I hear it echoed in
the bird’s throat
and see its form in
the snow flake.
Sing to me.

Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2012