The Heart of Loving
by Eugene Kennedy
One
Where does love begin?
Sadly, many people know more about the way love ends then the way it begins.
Is it, as Tolstoy said,
that love is bound to burn out
as a candle is before the end of the night?
They want love,
the force as mysterious and powerful as the wind
that binds people together in devotion to each other.
They want...
someone close,
someone to share a view of life with,
someone to feel safe
enough to be yourself...
p5
The quote to themselves the words of William Faulkner,
"Perhaps they were right putting love into books...
perhaps it could not live anywhere else."
Love, however,
cannot be imagined as separate from ourselves;
it is rooted in ourselves,
as much a part of us as breath and spirit,
something that is born as we break out of our self-concern,
something that grows with our responses to other persons.
It grows ever outward
from wanting love for ourselves
to its fullest form in giving
it freely away just for the sake of the other.
...
We make it happen as we open ourselves to others.
Love lives always
with the possibility of
of pain and death.
p9
Love retains the power to give us joy and peace
in the midst of our struggles and fears.
Love does not deny life;
if anything,
it forces us to look it more firmly in the dye.
Love bids us to discover strengths
we hardly suspect
are in our possession.
Love gives a shape to our energies
so that we can finally possess the meaning of our lives.
Love cannot be understood free from the treacherous snares
and entanglements of human existence;
it co-exists with pain and tragedy,
making them bearable and integrating them into the patterns of our lives.
Love can only be understood
as the energy
that binds the revelled strands of ourselves together,
as the power
that allows us to reach across the chasms of our imperfections
and to know the communion with another
which defies our selfishness and our shortcomings.
Lewis Mumford once wrote,
"Let us confess it:
the human condition is always desperate."
Love is a response
to the utter imperfection of our humanity,
the fire that forges together our varied weaknesses
so that our meaning as persons can emerge.
p13
Real love is powerful enough to accompany
imperfect persons through the shifting stages of their lives together.
Perfectionism implies
that it is not safe to appear in public
until our performance is so flawless
that it cannot be criticized;
we cannot appear until we are so well defended
that we cannot be seen.
So people who demand perfection of themselves
never enter very deeply into life at all.
This fear keeps them on the sidelines of life,
waiting for the perfection and the safe time
that never does come.
A fundamental truth about life,
filled with implications about love,
tells us
that our best performances are always imperfect ones.
Love
that tries to take on invulnerability through perfection
drains away from man and woman the vitality
they need to share life in a truly human way.
Love incorporates us
into an imperfect search for the kind of sharing through
which we draw gently together
the constantly fraying edges of our lives and relationships.
It is the miracle
that enables us to do what is right
even in the face of all that is wrong in us.
There is an active, intimate dimension for each of us in loving.
At no moment is love
separate from the stage of growth
we have reached.
p21
In other words,
love grows as we grow.
Love is not a finished product;
it is an always-developing enterprise,
urging us to discover more about our own possibilities
and enabling us to bring these to light in others as well.
Proust once described love
as time and space measured by the heart.
Love permits us to see our world in a fresh manner
and to appreciate the spiritual edging of every activity man chooses in its persuit.
Love deals with wholeness,
directing us to a more complete picture of life
as well as of ourselves.
Love is an integrating impulse through
which we put ourselves together
and bring more of ouselves into being.
That is precisely how it is creative,
because it brings our totoal personality to life.
Love draws our attention to what we can learn
only when we stand undefended before someone else.
Only here do we sense the mystery of openness and sharing,
not as long-dead phenomenon,
but as an active, experienced presence
enabling us to know and be known by others;
the light to see more deeply comes
from the flame ignited by the mystery of sharing.
Love lights up
the shadowed pathways of life
so that we can recognize each other.
p25
Love makes us mentally and emotionally conscious of
who we are and what we do with each other in the course of life.
Love opens us to the depth of life
in which lovers have learned to forgive themselves
and each other for being human.
Love gives us a richer view of the world around us,
a finer delineation of our relationships
and our responsibilities for them.
Where does love begin?
It begins in an imperfect person
who recognizes his imperfection
and accepts it as permanent and yet ever-changing.
Love begins in a human being
willing to risk ridicule and hurt—to accept
the danger of loss and the grief of separation
in order to reach out to another person.
It is in risking much that we can gain all,
in giving much that we can expect to discover love.
Love is not jealous of its secrets,
but it can be approached in only one way:
along the broad road
where we walk at least two by two,
stumbling and getting in each other's way
and at the same time
discovering that we are each other's strength and joy.
Illustrations by Ron Bradford