This week, I was introduced to just about the most beautiful passage on love I have ever read. It’s from The Prophet, a book by Lebanese-American poet and writer Khalil Gibran.

In the chapter on love, which you can read here, I encountered one of the most profound (and true) descriptions of this basic human emotion. Take some time to read it if you can.

As I read and re-read the passage to get its full meaning, one line stood out for me: “When love beckons to you follow him,/Though his ways are hard and steep.”

That line really brought home the meaning of love for me: that in order to truly experience love, you have to feel both its pleasure and its pain. Only then are you in the heart of love itself.

This was the line from which I began to write this song. I called it “On Heaven’s Wings” because I felt the title fit the message I wanted to achieve with it: An invitation to the one I love to experience true love with me.

There’s a reason for everything, and I think I discovered this passage because I wanted to write a love song to Carol this week. Something which had meaning…

I played this song to a fellow songwriter who was at the Maestro outlet at Scape Mall this morning, and he asked: “How many times have you made your wife fall in love with you?”

I shrugged and smiled. I think you’ll have to ask Carol for that answer.

On Heaven’s Wings
© Music and Lyrics by Marcel Lee Pereira, 12 Nov, 2010

Love, you beckoned, and there you stood
One girl in a million
You had me good, you had me good

Love, you beckoned, and I answered
Your voice smooth as a kitten’s purr
My thoughts a blur, my thoughts a blur

Chorus
Walk with me
And I will sing
Lie with me
On Heaven’s wings

I know, I fear that love can hurt
But love, it can also heal
Pleasure and pain, again and again

So I yielded my heart to you
‘Cos we don’t want to laugh alone
Nor cry under a stone, under a stone

Chorus
Walk with me
And I will sing
Lie with me
On Heaven’s wings

We shall run like the deer
Run free, two melodies
That fall and rise perfectly
I love you for you
And so I give freely
Myself, my heart, my life

Chorus
Walk with me
And I will sing
Lie with me
On Heaven’s wings