Afterword: Love After Love

Our unveiled gaze receives and reflects the brightness of God until

we are gradually turned into the image that we reflect.

—2 Corinthians 3:18

I first encountered Derek Walcott’s poem “Love After Love” on the very day the
West Indian poet died: March 17, 2017, just as I was beginning to write this
book. Back in the early 1970s, Walcott’s birthplace, the island of St. Lucia, was
the first place outside the continental United States where I was invited to
preach the Gospel. In fact, I met him at my conference there, which he was
humbly attending! We at the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati soon
sent four of our young members to work among the poor in St. Lucia, two black
and two white, two women and two men. It changed their lives. The beautiful
island and people always seemed enchanted to me, and they are still enchanting
in my memory. Now you will know another reason why: