In Love
While I had always believed in Love and Fate, I didn't fully understand either. In the very same moment of my own complete realization of Love and it's selfless nature I looked for the words to express it; Fate gave them to me.
I was sitting at a public library's computer as I had done everyday. These computers would only allow the user 1 hr and then it would shut down wiping out your work. Sometimes if I was lucky a user would get up and leave without shutting down their session allowing me to use up their time before I started my own. I can't be sure about who was actually at the computer before me. Often during those days I would easily slip into deep unbridled contemplative and meditative states as my heart and mind weighed heavy with dense thought of the world around me and my place in it. As I was waiting I watched a boy, maybe 10, get up and leave shortly before regaining attention, realizing there was an empty seat.
A few months before, and not the first time, I had pushed my best friend away because I thought it was the right thing to do. In the same breath as telling me she Loved me, she felt that we should just agree to disagree, but my heart told me that living that way was not living in Love. For me Love was about deep connection and I was demanding we find it. Other than my heart I had no other argument to defend myself, thus I would have had to accept her solution to our deference's for us to continue and to me that felt like giving up on Love. And so, in my relentless search for true Love, to another I said goodbye.
In that moment, at that computer, I had come to realize that my ways were not wrong, but incomplete (as is with all humanity). I began to type an email thanking her for showing me Love, because it was in our work for Love that I, for the first time, truly found what I was looking for. At that time my ability to express in words what I was feeling was limited. I gazed down for the internet icon and there at the bottom of my screen was a minimized word document titled "Love Defined".
Christmas of 04' I was given the book called "The Prophet", my first book opening me up to the tangible mysteries of Love. It rang true to me, in my mind it made perfect sense, it validated the spirit of what I was trying to say, but I had only read it once before I left it with another friend who I again pushed away because I felt they took me for granted. I had yet to fully understand "Love" and had only the beating of my own heart, my own soul, and my own work in life to come to my understanding of it. My friends asked me to stay, but in my mind they didn't want me to stay. I tried to Love my friends. I tried to show them friendship. I had fought for Love, cried for Love, begged God for understanding of Love, and in total submission I would die for Love. To me, the writing on that screen, on that day, at that moment, was a miracle. I can only call it Fate.
My whole life I've been told to speak up, either I didn't speak enough or when I did I was too quite. My step father use to scold me claiming I spoke like a girl, "be a man" he said. As a boy most cases arose simply because I was shy, but in that shyness I learned to listen very well. Soon, my shyness was compounded with a very early realization that I didn't really care for the conversation I often heard and if I did speak up my input was usually unwanted. As life for me has progressed this quietness has become a key factor in my understanding of the world. I learned a lot about people. I learned we all are unwillingly born into life. No one came up to us and said "hey, do you want to be born? Yes? O.K. Do you want to be rich or poor?" We all struggle. Rich or poor, we all have to work out why we are who we are.
This understanding is the very reason I had pushed so many away. I knew that it was wrong to put yourself above another. I knew that if you'd only look you'd see the best and that they're doing the same work you are. I'd fought many battles for this reason. But, what I had realized that day at the library was that I was not yet living "in Love" and if I knew so much about it I should be the example and not the judge, deciding when enough was enough.
And so, I began to read what can only be described as a near perfect reflection of what, in that moment, I had just come to realize about myself and the world around me. This writing rang so true to me and came to me in such an unlikely way, that it actually scared me. I was writing a email to my friend and looking for the words to articulate what was going to be, what I thought, my definition; they were already there. It scared me so much I was unable to include it in my email to her. Instead in tears I made ten copies and since then I have given away two copies in hopes of giving the recipient a better understanding of who I am. Interestingly, both assumed I was the writer.
Love sees the guilt, the sins, the smallness, the needs, the hurts, and the incompleteness of others and says of them, "The other is me. I am the other." No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. If I speak with the greatest human eloquence but do not love you, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I seek the most amazing prophetic powers enabling me to understand all divine truths and mysteries; and if I seek to possess and understand all knowledge and faiths so that I may remove mountains, but do not love you, I am nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but do not love you, I've gotten nowhere. No matter what I say, what I believe, what I do; I am bankrupt without love. Love never gives up on you. Love is never envious; never boils over with jealousy. Love doesn't strut; doesn't fly off the handle. Love is not rude. Love is not touchy or fretful or resentful. Love doesn't keep score of your sins. Love takes no account of evil done to it; pays no attention to a suffered wrong. Love does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking. Love puts up with anything. Love is ever ready to believe in the best of every person. Love's hopes are fadeless under all circumstances. Love is faith in God. Love is the flowering of Truth. Love always looks for the best; finds the good. Love never looks back or looks forward, but only keeps going to the end. The Living Word of God made into human form is Love. Love is the only reality; all else is illusion, misconception, falsehood. Of one thing I am certain: Love is the name by which The Other and Outer and Inner has revealed himself to me, and my own identity becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused whenever I allow anything but the relentless Love of the Lion-Lamb of God to dictate my perception of reality -- be it self-righteous anger, defensiveness, the desire to win, the pressing need to change others, whatever. The relentless Love of this Lion-Lamb challenges us, compels us, to become more like the God who is Love; to give up our false faces, our petty conceits, our irritating vanities, and our preposterous pretending. Love sees the guilt, the sins, the smallness, the needs, the hurts, and the incompleteness of others and says of them "The other is me. I am the other." Our reality has its destiny and will have its consummation in Love. All things will come to an end, but one thing will outlast all others: Love. Love never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end. As for Prophecy, it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for languages, they will be destroyed and cease; as for Knowledge, it will pass away and lose it's value and be superseded by Truth. For our current Knowledge is fragmentary, incomplete, and imperfect; and our prophecy and our teaching are fragmentary, incomplete, and imperfect. But when the Complete and Perfect (the Total) comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away and become antiquated, void, and will be superseded. Now we are all as little children. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside. Then, when the Total comes, we will likewise put away our prophesy, our languages, and our Knowledge. For we are looking into a mirror that gives only a dim, blurred reflection of reality as in a riddle or enigma, but then, when Perfection comes, we shall see in reality and face to face. Now I know in part and imperfectly, but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood by God. And Faith, Hope, and Love abide, these three; But the greatest of these is Love.
Sometime later I realized that this definition of Love is a variation of Corinthians chapter 13. The first time I heard it spoke out load was during a marriage ceremony. While I have hoped and fought for patience in the world, I was not fully patient. For if I had been, living "in Love", then surely the others I cared about would have had a chance to see what I was insisting to be true; I lived as if my chance of achieving it was dependent on them. If I had truly lived "in Love", then maybe I could have found a friend to be "in Love" with. And so, "in Love", on the road of life I await Love's Champions, that in sharing our boons we may live "in Love" together.