Hopeful Thinking: Her soul could not be burned

Hopeful Thinking: Her soul could not be burned

In the spring of 1310, a woman stood in a public square in Paris and waited for the fire to be lit beneath her feet. Her name was Marguerite Porete. She had not led an army. She had not plotted against a king. She had written a book. The flames did not win. They rarely do. More than 700 years later, people are still reading her words. Which tells us something about the unique durability of love. Porete was born sometime in the mid-thirteenth cen…