I cannot honestly say the number of times I go to write something about love on this blog and then stop short.
What can I say?
Has not everything that could possibly be said been said already? Even if it had not, how could I presume to have something to add to the castle of thought and literature on this topic that has already been built?
Sometime I think a poem or song would be more managable, because at least in such prose there are some definite boundaries for me to work within. Other times I think just an ongoing list of descriptive adjectives and verbs would suffice. More often, I wish for a palette and every color in existence, so that I can just shade and draw and paint the beautiful explosion of color that I feel communicates what I think about love.
However, since I am not in a place to write poetry, my guitar is not handy and I have no paints or crayons, I will have to accept a feeble attempt with bare words.
The following will sometimes inappropriately use semicolons - ; - please do not hate. It made this easier.
Love. It is guttural and raw; fearsome and blinding; causing you to want to run in the complete opposite direction and hide until the storm passes you by, praying it doesn't notice you shaking there; white light that pierces through your soul, opens up your inner self so far that what you discover you never knew existed within you; purifying, making new over and over and over again; mesmerizing, gorgeous, beautiful, stunning, spellbinding, unhinging, you are left tripping over yourself with a little drool hanging off your lip; enlivening, lifting you up in ever higher concentric circles until all the world is far below and freedom and air and joy and hilarity are all you can sense around you; intoxicating, all that you do, every thought, every choice, every triumph or mistake, every moment is consumed with your love, and the lover - they go with you everywhere, you cannot be alone again, they exist within you and you within them, no distance can separate and no trial can break the "love" that has become its own person, the love that is freely given from one to the other; self-revelatory, clearing away fogs and cobwebs around the heart, breaking into the proverbial "west wing" and discovering the wiltin rose that must be brought to life again; enthralling, leaving the blood in your veins tingling for hours after you encounter love, and causing your heart to leave its common pace and awaken you throughout the night to remind you of the transformation taking place; deadly, in the most serious way - you will awaken as someone new - not that you lose who you are but that you find who you were always meant to be, and this new skin fits better than the old ever could have, and the new eyes you see with understand the world in all the glory you never could perceive before, and the new heart you carry drips with mercy and forgiveness, understanding and compassion, readiness to give of itself at every moment, for you have no way to pay back the gift that has been given to you, that you've received - to way to fulfill the debt of love created when another wholly and completely hands themself over to your miserable and faulty hands; there is no recovery, once you are taken in, and even in the most barren and lonely times, when all the world has failed you and your lover has failed first and foremost, and you are nursing the bitter wounds of your heart in dark places... even then, and perhaps more than ever, does the glory of what love is reveal itself - it is forever, and it cannot be shaken nor destroyed, not drowned nor killed in any way, it will not be deterred and it cannot be taken back - it is the gift that once given, only takes more of the person along with it next time, and more the next, until the only joy the person can experience is when it is giving itself in love; it is more than a habit, more than a virtue, more than a moral code, more than a way of life or a creed, more than a gospel or message, it is a state of being - a single Being (God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Love Himself) - and it is an existence that participates in this being so that the two beings are so united that it is hard to distinguish between them.
Certainly, our human love has far to go before it can ascend these heights, or before it can remain in these heights, or even begin to truly comprehend what sacrifice and self-abandonment is involved with these heights...but what is received, what is gained, what is given as a gift - it is worth everything, more than life itself, for it cannot die, and when we die it lives on, and when we are gone we are not gone at all, for Love has taken us into itself and made a home for us, and we have freely chosen to dwell in Love for all time, and there we are more fully made ourselves than we could ever fathom. "I did not know myself until I was Loved" should be our motto, and it should be renewed every day. Then, moreover, "I did not know myself until I learned to Love in return, to receive Love and then to Love back." This is that starting point, the door that leads to the path where all other journeys and travels converge.
Here we find life, and life in abundance. Because God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son.
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