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Love.
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When we die, we take love with us.
Of God, of others - and their love of us.
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That is not all we take - but it is the most important thing.
And that we do take love with us is a vital but neglected/ denied/ unexplained fact.
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But what kind of a thing is love? - What are suitable analogies? - More work needed...
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At the risk of being self-indulgent, here is a poem I wrote about 7 years ago that may be of some worth.
ReplyDeleteDeath has come and made life real.
The gray of drab November rain,
Clings to my cheeks, like ice tears.
See the quivering of my soul,
Shaking beneath my frozen skin.
A child has died today.
Can you know such dread as touches me?
My son has fallen in the night.
His steps once sure, are silent.
A breath like icy crispness hangs upon his corpse.
The crystals shine as jewels.
But oh, for all the diamonds of the world,
That would I gladly give, and more, for him.
How can I bear the knowledge that shatters all illusion?
Can love break apart the cold and lifeless lips,
And place the warmth of living breath within?
Will the sun ever rise again?
In the darkness, mumbling incoherent mutterings of grief,
Broken and sliced open with shards of desolation,
A drop of love in ocean's sorrowful depths reminds me:
Death has come, and made life real.
Drat, I thought the answer was going to be "our iTunes library".
ReplyDeleteNo. We take nothing at all. We are what we take, and that is nothing. But this nothing is eternal and indestructible. It lives.
ReplyDeleteUnless by 'love', you mean total equanimity, devoid of any and all emotion.