somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;
--e.e.cummings
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Corinthians 13:4-7
Love facilitates the successful and total expression of the Lover's being; naught but love's muse can truly inspire the full revelation of the Lover's life and talents. One truly in love is quickened, joyously accelerated in all activities, invigorated, powerful, real. He is able to do more than his contemplation ever perceived possible; wellsprings of his deepest greatness are through love allowed to gush excellently forth. Love is the soul's expansive force which impels and pushes it to touch and shape positively all of experienced reality.
I will declare that the world was created with love.
Jacob said, “Behold, it is still high day; it is not time for the livestock to be gathered. Water the sheep, and go, pasture them.” But they said, “We cannot, until all the flocks are gathered, and they roll the stone from the mouth of the well; then we shall water the sheep.”
While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess. When Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. Then Jacob kissed Rachel...
Genesis 29: 7-11
Even God only creates with love. Creation is not only an act motivated by divine love, it was actually carried out through the medium of His love. Love is the power and light that creates.
That is why Jewish mysticism reads the verse in Psalms 89:2
כִּי אָמַרְתִּי עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה
not just with its usual translation
I will declare that your love stands firm forever.
but also
I will declare that your love stands firm forever.
but also
As the Zohar calls love חסד יומא דאזיל עם כולא יומין , a day that accompanies all days. It was the Light that was created on the first day, and that with which all came into being all the other days. The first revelation of love, “accompanies” and radiates its light to all the other days and details of Creation, like the love in the soul arouses all the other expressions of emotive force which succeed it.
The attribute of Chesed (Love) and the spreading forth of the life-force into all the worlds and created things without end or limits so that they shall be created ex nihilo and exist...comes from the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His Glory and Essence...[and] causes life-force and existence ex nihilo to issue forth for an unlimited number of worlds and creatures, for “It is the nature of the beneficient to do good:”
Now, this manifestation of love is the praise of the Holy One, blessed be He, alone, for no other created thing can create a being out of naught and give it life.
--Tanya, Shaar HaYicud 4
In the darkest hours, only one who knows love is strong enough to endure all.
Why, then, would the Beloved ever possibly close the Lover?
TO BE CONTINUED
As we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner's existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.
"Stop!" We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
"Can't you hurry up, you pigs?" Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing — which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death".
--Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, Experiences in a Concentration Camp
--Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, Experiences in a Concentration Camp
Why, then, would the Beloved ever possibly close the Lover?
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
TO BE CONTINUED
