He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." - Rainer Maria Rilke


I have been loved dearly in the 19 years that I have been alive.
I have found my identity in the love I have for others, and in the love that others have for me, and primarily, in the "reckless raging fury that they call the love of God."

To love is to understand beauty.
I have received no clearer glimpse of heaven than in the loving relationships that have been given to me. It is one of the great ironies of life. Just as the love given to me has revealed holy truths to me, so too have the misunderstandings of love sent me spiraling down into the feelings of rejection and confusion. And so I can say, the love that has fit into my family has taught me many things.

To love is to understand beauty, but in an entirely different way.

Love is irresistible, and Maslow would have us believe it is a need. It is impossible to live without love, and in the same way, it is impossible to love without pain.

As Henri Nouwen says,

Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies ... the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.

Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.


The risk of loving, true loving, is always worth taking.

This is a truth that can only be understood by someone who is a person of hope. By a person who sees their story as nothing less than a contributor to the greater narrative. This truth can only be understood by a person who hopes in, and not only for things.  This truth can only be understood through the lens of redemption.

In C.S. Lewis' story The Great Divorce, we find the narrator amidst a group of souls entering heaven. Each of them is greeted by a former human, who is now a resident of heaven. He tells of a woman that he witnesses on the brink of understanding heaven. She is arguing with her old friend who greeted her, and her only agenda is to see her son who died when he was very young, many years ago. She cares nothing for seeing God, let alone serving him,  she only cares to see her son. As the conversation develops, the host who was trying to help her understand is unable to convince her of the true priorities. Before we are led away from the scene, we hear her say the words "I hate your religion and I hate and despise your God. I believe in a God of Love."

We never find out what happens to this woman, but we do get some explanation. As the narrator listens to his own heavenly counselor, we read the words

"love, as mortals understand the word, isn't enough. Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried."

This is a hope than I can, and must cling to. Just as God is creative in the formless and empty, just as seeds must die before they grow, Love will not rise, until it has been buried.

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The love that has tangibly fit into my life has never been separate from pain, and beyond that, there are loving relationships I have that consist almost exclusively of that pain.




On this Father's day, I think of my family, and the story that it tells, and I know that the story is not over.

To love is to understand beauty. And every natural love will rise again, and live forever in that country, but not until it has been buried.

That is a hope that I can cling to.