The Greatest Love of All

אהבתי אתכם אמר ה'

מלאכי--

"I have loved you," saith the Lord.

--Malachi 

...הנך יפה רעייתי, הנך יפה

עד שיפוח היום, ונסו הצללים-אלך לי אל הר המור, ואל גבעת הלבונה

כולך יפה רעייתי, ומום אין בך

איתי מלבנון כלה...ממעונות אריות, מהררי נמרים

ליבבתיני, אחותי כלה; ליבבתיני באחת מעינייך

מה-יפו דודייך, אחותי כלה; מה-טובו דודייך מיין, וריח שמנייך מכל-בשמים

נופת תיטופנה שפתותייך, כלה; דבש וחלב תחת לשונך

שיר השירים-- 

How beautiful you are, my darling!
    Oh, how beautiful...
    Until the day breaks
    and the shadows flee,
I will go to the mountain of myrrh
    and to the hill of incense.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
    there is no flaw in you.

Come with me, my bride….from the lions’ dens
    and the mountain haunts of leopards.
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
    you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes…
 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!
    How much more pleasing is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your perfume
    more than any spice!  Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
    milk and honey are under your tongue.

--Song of Songs

                                               

For so many people, so many holy, broken, badly hurt people, this is the hardest, most frustratingly elusive faith to achieve. To actually feel or even believe that God loves us with a passionate fiery love seems like a painfully distant, dreamy Arcadian island of fantasy. Long after the mind has reached a level of comfort in believing in God's existence, either by way of realizing that the intellectual proofs positing His being, though far from utterly conclusive, comfortably outweigh the arguments against; or through allowing the pure, stronger, innate faith of the soul to outshine the precious cognitive faculties because of the realization that "one does not kindle a candle in order to see the sun" (Petrus Damiani)- there are still miles to go before one can sleep and snuggle comfortably in the loving embrace of the Shade of the Wings of the Omnipresent, in the greatest love of all. Like a lonely, melancholy bud that cannot succeed to open its petals and receive the warming rays that are always tenderly hovering around it, the person who must struggle to escape the dungeon of terrestrial solitude and trust God's assurances that He is enamored with us suffocates within his inability to face the Infinite Love that shines with overpowering discreetness. 

While His existence can be logically exhibited, His love never can.

When Christianity (Judaism and Islam say the same-S.B.) says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes.
                         --C.S. Lewis

If only we loved Him as He loves us...Let us believe Him when He declares that He does...

A...good way for a man… to arouse and kindle the light of the love that is implanted and concealed in his heart, that it may shine forth with its intense light, like a burning fire, in the consciousness of the heart and mind, to surrender his soul to God, together with his body and [material] possessions, with all his heart, and all his soul and all his might, from the depth of the heart, in absolute truth, is… to take to heart the meaning of the verse: "As in water, face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man." This means that as [in the case of] the likeness and features of the face which a man presents to the water, the same identical face is reflected back to him from the water, so indeed is also the heart of a man who is loyal in his affection for another person, for this love awakens a loving response for him in the heart of his friend also, cementing their mutual love and loyalty for each other, especially as each sees his friend's love for him.

Such is the common nature in the character of every man even when they are equal in status. How much more so when a great and mighty king shows his great and intense love for a commoner who is despised and lowly among men, a disgraceful creature cast on the dunghill, yet he [the king] comes down to him from the place of his glory, together with all his retinue, and raises him and exalts him from his dunghill and brings him into his palace, the royal palace, in the innermost chamber, a place such as no servant nor lord ever enters, and there shares with him the closest companionship with embraces and kisses and spiritual attachment with all heart and soul— how much more will, of itself, be aroused a doubled and redoubled love in the heart of this most common and humble individual for the person of the king, with a true attachment of spirit, heart and soul, and with infinite heartfelt sincerity. Even if his heart be like a heart of stone, it will surely melt and become water, and his soul will pour itself out like water, with soulful longing for the love of the king.

In a manner corresponding in every detail to the said figure and image but to an infinitely greater degree, has the Lord our God dealt with us. For His greatness is beyond comprehension, and He pervades all worlds and transcends all worlds… it is known of the infinite multitude of worlds, and of the countless myriads of angels in each world …[and] before Him, all of them are accounted as nothing at all and are nullified in their very existence…All these [angels] ask: "Where is the place of His glory?" And they answer: "The whole earth is full of His glory," that is, His people… to bring them near to Him in true closeness and unity, with a truly soulful attachment on the level of "kisses" of mouth to mouth, by means of uttering the word of God…also with a form of "embrace," namely, the fulfillment of the positive precepts…of the King…

Like one who betrothes a wife that she may be united with him with a perfect bond, as is written: "And he shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh." Exactly so, and even infinitely surpassing, is the union of the divine soul…with the light of the blessed En Sof (Infinite).

Therefore did Solomon, peace unto him, in the Song of Songs compare this union with the union of bridegroom and bride in attachment, desire, and pleasure, embrace and kissing…For through the union of the soul with, and its absorption into, the light of the blessed En Sof, it attains the quality and degree of the holiness of the blessed En Sof Himself, since it unites itself with, and is integrated into, Him, may He be blessed, and they become One in reality…for the corporeality of the body does not prevent the union of the soul with the light of the blessed En Sof, Who fills all worlds, and as is written: "Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee."

      --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya Ch. 46

Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 2

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Until the lengthening wings break into fire

At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

The angels would press on us and aspire

To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay

Rather on earth, Belovèd,—where the unfit

Contrarious moods of men recoil away

And isolate pure spirits, and permit

A place to stand and love in for a day,  

With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. 

                 --Elizabeth Barret Browning

All actual life is encounter.

                  --Martin Buber

It is never easy to truly see someone. And few blessings in this lifetime can compare with the feeling that one enjoys when truly and completely seen by another.

It is noble to empathize with another person’s pain, joy, or experience. One needs to turn aside from his usual preoccupations, take a step from self, and focus on the other person’s life for a while. But that is still not completely seeing the other and standing in total relation to him. That is sharing your being with his.

The encounter of two people at the deepest level, to the extent of utter communion, is when they truly see each other...see all and unleash all that there is to be seen...see nothing else.

That encounter cannot be reached with a supercilious comfort and casualness. It is the labor of a lifetime; it is the deepest experience of life itself. It is the ability to be submerged in the other, to experience the other fully. Only "pure spirits" willing to lose all sight of any distractions that will hold them back from dissolving into the immediacy of the other and to become exclusively present in the one who they are deeply seeing can "stand up erect and strong/Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,/Until the lengthening wings break into fire."

One of the greatest humanists of our time, Martin Buber, wrote an entire work about this goal  - I and Thou.

He built an entire philosophy of relations between man and man, and man and God, by explaining that we are constantly faced with the choice of living in two radically different worlds--the "World of Thou" or the "World of It." This is based on his relating to other men and objects with two opposite attitudes. "To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold nature." He can see them as objects to be viewed, observed, and utilized. As "It"s. Or--

"If I confront a human being as my Thou, and say the primary word I-You to him, then he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a specific point in space and time within the net of the world; nor is he a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless ans seamless, he is You and fills the heavens. This does not mean that nothing exists except him. But all else lives in his light."

"Every actual relationship to another being in the world is exclusive. Its You is freed and steps forth to confront us in its uniqueness."

"I-You can only be spoken with the whole being."

Buber then goes on to explain that in truth, every You experience, every seeing of the other with wholeness and devotion, is essentially an experience of God Himself. 

"Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the Eternal You. Every single You is a glimpse of that." 


To the extent that even one who "fancies that he is godless--when he addresses with his whole devoted being the You of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God."

And just as when submerged in a terrestrial You, all the rest of life and reality is viewed solely through his light and based on the exclusive relationship with him, so, too, with the Eternal You.

"In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. He who enters into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance--neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven--but, yet, everything is included in the relationship. For to step into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything, but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but to establish it on its true basis. To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence. "Here world, there God" is the language of It; "God in the world" is another language of It ; but leaving out nothing, leaving behind nothing at all, to include the whole world in the You, to give the world its due and its truth, to have nothing besides God but to grasp everything in Him-that is the perfect relationship. 

Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. Whoever goes forth to his You with his whole being, and carries to Him all the being of the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. 

Of course God is the "wholly Other";but He is also the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overwhelms; but He is also the mystery of the obvious, nearer to me than my own I."



To live life with intensity and meaning, to stand in exclusive relationship with God by seeing Him in all. To be like the cherubs that always not only face each other, but also see each other, with "lengthening wings [that] break into fire/At either curvèd point." Like two people content to revel in each other's being with devotion and wholeheartedness--to be like that with God, to see the Eternal You as one relates to reality with deliberateness and meaning.

The most important thing is to habituate oneself, to train the thought and mind to recall at all times, that all he sees in the heavens and the earth and all therein are but the outer garments of the King that is enclothed in them.

      

       --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya 42 

Turn your eyes from me;
    they overwhelm me.

      -- Song of Songs 6

See that caravan of camels

      loaded up with sugar?

His eyes contain that much sweetness.

But don’t look into His eyes

      unless you’re ready to lose all sight of your own.

                             

       --Rumi