Continuing to explore the seasons of life, today’s theme is love.
“I am my beloved’s and he is mine, his banner over me is love.” (Song of Songs)
If any of us has ever been truly in love, we might know that it is a state of being which is like no other. It can fill us joy, hope and delight in being alive, but it can also make us extremely vulnerable to pain, tragedy and profound loss. Each of us has had a different experience of love and each may tell another tale. Each story, I do believe, has its own rightful place in the world as we struggle to learn what it means to be human and to live before God.
German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote: love is the opportunity to “become world” to another. I have struggled at times to understand these sensitive words. And yet something rings true about them, something much greater than ourselves.
Might love for another human being be necessary in order to complete our birth? Perhaps the answer is yes – although it may be necessary to look at the theme in a very differentiated way. There are so many ways to love, are there not?
In which ways have we loved or been loved? In which ways have I? How might we learn to open our hands to receive and to give? I do not have the answer to this last question, but I am trying. And this must be a good thing, this trying, for it must be the sign that we are truly alive.
Love must indeed be the Song of all Songs.
God,
there is so much to think about. Receive us with all our joy and loss into your care. And there, where life has pained us, heal and guide. Amen.
