Posts tagged love

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Never a skinny love.

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order’s tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I’ll be with you
But it will be a different “kind”
I’ll be holding all the tickets 
And you’ll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?
Now I’m breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind?  (Lyrics by Justin Vernon, performed by Bon Iver)

…cut the ropes and let me fall, whenever there’s a “thinness” to it all.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to never a skinny love.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Letting go of a lesser love.

“A young man came to see me.  At the time he was also seeing a psychologist who in fact had sent him to me, a priest, to help deal with some of his guilt. His guilt centered around his past life and had been triggered by falling in love. 

He was in his mid-twenties and had, more than a year before, become engaged to a young lady whom he deeply loved and who deeply loved him. She was an attractive and exceptionally good lady.  She was his first serious love - and his first moral love.


In the four or five years prior to meeting her, he had lived irresponsibly. Although he had a good family background, during his university years he had drifted away from the church, from prayer and from the teaching on sexuality.  During this period he had lived primarily by the pleasure principle.


What is curious is that during this irresponsibility his threshold of inner conflict and pain was minimal.  He had been self-confident, cocky, seemingly without excess anxiety, solidly convinced of his own goodness and not particularly given to guilt.  

That self-confident world collapsed soon after he fell in love.  In love with a very good and moral person, he became aware of himself in a new way. Initially he simply felt guilty about his past sexual affairs, disappointed that in the light of meeting and falling in love with such a beautiful person he had not previously been faithful to that relationship.  Eventually his inner conflict became more encompassing.

To his credit, he sensed that he needed help to deal with this.  He postponed plans to marry until, as he put it, he could get a better grip on his own selfishness and could work through some of his past and his guilts.

What seemed strange at the time was why he should be in such pain now, just when he had so beautifully fallen in love.  But his pain was necessary, purgative and redemptively produced by the love itself.


Her love was saving him.

It was a light that was showing him the dark corners of himself and it was also a power that was enabling him to face that darkness.


This was the experience of grace.

Grace is eventually ecstatic, but initially it can be literally as painful as hell.


Purgatory, as this story illustrates, is the redemptive pain that follows falling in love.  



It is not an arbitrary punishment for sin.

It is the pain of entering community.

The pattern of love, community, and salvation is not loneliness - falling in love - ecstasy, but loneliness - falling in love - a brief taste of ecstasy - a long, painful conflictual purgative experience - ecstasy.


Morris West has remarked that:

“All miracles begin with the act of falling in love.”


Salvation begins there.

Purgatory sits between initial and final salvation.



Purgatory is a stage of loving, the initial pain of entering into community.  

Mystics have classically defined purgatory as the pain of letting go of a lesser love and life in order to accept a deeper love and life.  

What is interesting is that definition is that purgatory is not a place separate from heaven, a place you go in order to be punished for your sins so as to prepare you for heaven.  

Purgatory is the pain of entering heaven.”  Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten Among the Lilies

…enter here.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to let go of lesser love.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

A splitscreen love story.

I am in here.

My beloved is there.




“Splitscreen: A Love Story” mirrors a long-distance relationship

…with my beloved in Ireland.


…with my beloved in heaven.

 This synchronization of selves.  
 
 That synchronization of spirituality.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to a splitscreen love story.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

That river named suffering and boat named love.


“And I saw the river over which every soul must pass to reach the kingdom of heaven and the name of that river was “Suffering.”  And I saw a boat which carries souls across the river and the name of that boat was “Love.”  John of the Cross


The water of that river is dark and deep. 

The boat that carries us is just as deep.



…the river and the boat.

…the boat and the river.


…suffering and love. 

…love and suffering.



Can I ever know the river without the boat, or the boat without the river?

Can I ever know suffering without love, or love without suffering?



I have a GIVENNESS NOW to that river named suffering and boat named love.