I am not going to bother to put a disclaimer here because my friends who read my blog already know that I am weird; thus, it won't matter. I am going to say some confusing controversial crap.......my usual writing style.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the word "love" and what that means to me. Normally, what that word means is linked with some romantic fallacy, some "high on emotion notion." It's returns are worth less than the stock markets lowest drop! I am typing in "jumbledness." Bear with me. To me, sex and love don't jive together. To me, they will never. They are two separate entities.......if I can call them that.
To me, sex mixed with love is blasphemy. Yeah. There. I said it. Yeah. I also know that is not scriptural and I also know that God ordained man to be fruitful and multiply and blah blah blah. I did not say that sex was not pleasurable. I suppose it can be labeled a lustful appetite. Sure. I will agree to that. I can't really go into all my reasons why I reached my view of sex here on this blog, but I don't so much have a very high opinion of the whole thing.
But, I have love and sex all mixed up and I wanna know what REAL love is and in my mind it really has nothing to do with sex at all. I am currently listening to (while I am typing this) to an 80's song by Foreigner, "I Wanna Know What Love Is." And that is my thoughts right now. Not toward any human being. Toward God. I wanna know what love is. I left church last night with this sense of "let down." I overheard a leader in the church complaining about another person saying, "I am tired of fooling with her. She is going to have to get her act together. I am tired of babying her." I am not angry at this leader. And I am trying really hard not to lose any respect for her. I realize that she is human and I don't know all the circumstances surrounding this person she was referring to. I know this person is human, but I still feel this let down.
Maybe I sound judgmental. I don't mean to be. Really, her statement made me look inside myself. I thought to myself, "Are you any better?" And the honest answer I had to come up with was, "No." I thought about the comments I make. I thought about all the mean sarcasm I use about others, and how if they heard me, it could hurt them deeply. I thought about my own cruel remarks and jokes and how NOT funny it can be. I sit sometimes and I think about hurting people who may be so broken that they are on the verge of dying and I pass them by everyday.
Where is love? If love is not in sex, the Foreigner songs, the fairytale romance movies with everlasting love endings, and if love is not even in church folks, WHERE IS LOVE? Love is in God. Where is God then? God does not seem to be in me. I appear to be too self centered to love anybody but myself. Writing this blog is hard because I am angry. I am angry at myself.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The Grinch did not steal Christmas
This sort of love is risky because it is a stone cold fact, at some point, I will get hurt. But, I am finding that it is worth the sacrifice. One of my fondest Christmas memories is the yr my dad and I decorated a Grinch gingerbread house together. This was not a childhood memory. I was probably close to 30 that Christmas. But, it is one of the most treasured memories I have of my dad and I. I will never forget it. I have decided that next yr I am not putting up my tree at my house I am taking all my decorations to my parents and decorate their house for Christmas. I only hope that everyone is still in good health for that to happen. Somehow this Christmas was different. I learned a little more about love.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The Misconceptions of Love
English literature has managed to win a place within my heart. I have developed a love affair with Beowolf, Paradise Lost, and several writings by Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser. I am going to use these next few days while school is out to read parts of my English Lit book that was not covered in class........so, yeah, I am a total nerd.
There is a sonnet by Shakespeare that is so full of wisdom that I fell in love with the truth and wisdom that it holds. I wrote an essay on this sonnet for extra credit in my Lit class. Here goes:
Shakespeare Sonnet 138:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth [like a simpleton],
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust [unfaithful]?
But wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love's best [guise] is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
I wrote a whole essay on this and probably could have wrote a short book on it. It is a bitter sonnet about a man who stays with his wife knowing that she is being unfaithful to him. Apparently he is a lot older than this woman and he feels the bitter insecurity of it because he knows that she is cheating on him probably with younger men. But, we see here that he is humoring her by pretending he does not know who she really is. He turns a blind eye to her unfaithfulness. Those last two lines are priceless: "Therefore I lie with her and she with me, and in our faults by lies we flattered be." That is a powerful statement and a hard way to live.
There is a devastating healing (I know that sounds twisted) that comes from waking up next to someone you thought was your dream come true only to find out that it was a nightmare. Shakespeare summed it up by saying that they were only pretending with each other. There is a wonderful freedom that comes from seeing the truth about yourself and someone else when you know deep down that you are out of God's will. It hurts. It crushes, but in the end it heals.
There is a sonnet by Shakespeare that is so full of wisdom that I fell in love with the truth and wisdom that it holds. I wrote an essay on this sonnet for extra credit in my Lit class. Here goes:
Shakespeare Sonnet 138:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth [like a simpleton],
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust [unfaithful]?
But wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love's best [guise] is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
I wrote a whole essay on this and probably could have wrote a short book on it. It is a bitter sonnet about a man who stays with his wife knowing that she is being unfaithful to him. Apparently he is a lot older than this woman and he feels the bitter insecurity of it because he knows that she is cheating on him probably with younger men. But, we see here that he is humoring her by pretending he does not know who she really is. He turns a blind eye to her unfaithfulness. Those last two lines are priceless: "Therefore I lie with her and she with me, and in our faults by lies we flattered be." That is a powerful statement and a hard way to live.
There is a devastating healing (I know that sounds twisted) that comes from waking up next to someone you thought was your dream come true only to find out that it was a nightmare. Shakespeare summed it up by saying that they were only pretending with each other. There is a wonderful freedom that comes from seeing the truth about yourself and someone else when you know deep down that you are out of God's will. It hurts. It crushes, but in the end it heals.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Love according to Shakespeare and Jesus
My friend Terri has accurately coined the way my mind works using the analogy of a ping pong ball. I love this because it really does describe how I think. I bounce all over the place, but usually, if someone sticks with me, there is some meaning to my madness. So, if you wait this out, there is a point.
I was just about to write a blog on co-dependency, but I changed directions after meditating on a quote that was written by my friend Sarah in one of her blog posts, "Loving the Sharp Places." Speaking of her daughter, she says, "How else will she learn of love, that it has more to do with the lover than the condition of the beloved?" Isn't that a powerful quote? Just so happens that Shakespeare has written a Sonnet that fits this quote wonderfully.
Sonnet 130: William Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why her breast are dun;
If hairs be wires, then black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red, and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare (extraordinary)
As any she belied, (misrepresented) with false compare.
Shakespeare is writing this sonnet in the voice of a lover for his beloved. Ironically, most poems are written in form of a man who adores a woman who has a long list of beautiful characteristics that makes her beautiful to him; however, not in this Sonnet. This is written exactly the opposite. The man portrayed here, uses nauseating language to describe his beloved. He says, in a nutshell, that her lips are not red, her cheeks not rosy, her hair is black and wiry, her breasts are dull brown, her breath stinks, her voice is not like the sound of music, and finally, she is not a goddess. She walks on the ground. This is a fairly insulting way to be described. Clearly, this man does not have this woman placed on a pedestal.
However, he says that his love for her is rare and nothing compares to her. According to this sonnet, there is nothing attractive about this woman. Her features are repulsive; however, he is vowing his undying love for her. What Shakespeare is describing here is a transcendent love; one that surpasses the condition of the object of his affections. This is a poignant rendering of God's love for us.
I tied all this into a conversation that I had with a friend last night. I was telling him about Sarah's quote. I said, "Isn't that an awesome quote?" He said, yes, that it made him think of hugging a cactus. Okay, that was one of my ping pong comments. I laughed. I said, "How did you get hugging a cactus out of a beautiful quote?" He said it made him think of God and that we are like cacti to Him. He chooses to embrace us despite the fact that His holy nature and our unholy nature clash.
As I meditated deeper on this, I came up with more conclusions. God gives up his rights to befriend us. He relinquishes His power as God. He does not change His mind about sin and our sinful nature. However, He suppresses His rights as God when He does not demand that we change our wrong behavior. He does this to love us out of our sins, not eradicate them by snuffing our lives out just because He is God and has the power to do so. He relinquishes a real part of who He is to embrace us. This is apparent on the cross when Christ died.........Jesus gave up His Godhood, His glorious crown in heaven, to wear one of thorns. Christ relinquished His power as the Son when He refused to come down from the cross. Instead of saving Himself (which He was urged to do by a mocker while on the cross) He hang there, allowed those whom He created to mock Him, and died.
Jesus never chose the easy way out. He chose the path of love which made Him vulnerable to being hurt by those He loved. We might want tell someone, "Get on with it. Grow up out of your mess." However, God, although having full power to do so, does not. He patiently waits for us to come to Him instead of saying to Himself, "Let's hurry up and get this job done." God does not strong-arm us into change. This aspect of God makes Him both good and fearful in the same moment. God comes to His sanctuary, our inner selves, and begins to snoop around in there and "bug" us about things that displease Him. He does not do this because He is demanding His own way. He does this because those things that displease Him, destroy us.
God's love is not about our condition, but about the transcendence of His love.
I was just about to write a blog on co-dependency, but I changed directions after meditating on a quote that was written by my friend Sarah in one of her blog posts, "Loving the Sharp Places." Speaking of her daughter, she says, "How else will she learn of love, that it has more to do with the lover than the condition of the beloved?" Isn't that a powerful quote? Just so happens that Shakespeare has written a Sonnet that fits this quote wonderfully.
Sonnet 130: William Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why her breast are dun;
If hairs be wires, then black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red, and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare (extraordinary)
As any she belied, (misrepresented) with false compare.
Shakespeare is writing this sonnet in the voice of a lover for his beloved. Ironically, most poems are written in form of a man who adores a woman who has a long list of beautiful characteristics that makes her beautiful to him; however, not in this Sonnet. This is written exactly the opposite. The man portrayed here, uses nauseating language to describe his beloved. He says, in a nutshell, that her lips are not red, her cheeks not rosy, her hair is black and wiry, her breasts are dull brown, her breath stinks, her voice is not like the sound of music, and finally, she is not a goddess. She walks on the ground. This is a fairly insulting way to be described. Clearly, this man does not have this woman placed on a pedestal.
However, he says that his love for her is rare and nothing compares to her. According to this sonnet, there is nothing attractive about this woman. Her features are repulsive; however, he is vowing his undying love for her. What Shakespeare is describing here is a transcendent love; one that surpasses the condition of the object of his affections. This is a poignant rendering of God's love for us.
I tied all this into a conversation that I had with a friend last night. I was telling him about Sarah's quote. I said, "Isn't that an awesome quote?" He said, yes, that it made him think of hugging a cactus. Okay, that was one of my ping pong comments. I laughed. I said, "How did you get hugging a cactus out of a beautiful quote?" He said it made him think of God and that we are like cacti to Him. He chooses to embrace us despite the fact that His holy nature and our unholy nature clash.
As I meditated deeper on this, I came up with more conclusions. God gives up his rights to befriend us. He relinquishes His power as God. He does not change His mind about sin and our sinful nature. However, He suppresses His rights as God when He does not demand that we change our wrong behavior. He does this to love us out of our sins, not eradicate them by snuffing our lives out just because He is God and has the power to do so. He relinquishes a real part of who He is to embrace us. This is apparent on the cross when Christ died.........Jesus gave up His Godhood, His glorious crown in heaven, to wear one of thorns. Christ relinquished His power as the Son when He refused to come down from the cross. Instead of saving Himself (which He was urged to do by a mocker while on the cross) He hang there, allowed those whom He created to mock Him, and died.
Jesus never chose the easy way out. He chose the path of love which made Him vulnerable to being hurt by those He loved. We might want tell someone, "Get on with it. Grow up out of your mess." However, God, although having full power to do so, does not. He patiently waits for us to come to Him instead of saying to Himself, "Let's hurry up and get this job done." God does not strong-arm us into change. This aspect of God makes Him both good and fearful in the same moment. God comes to His sanctuary, our inner selves, and begins to snoop around in there and "bug" us about things that displease Him. He does not do this because He is demanding His own way. He does this because those things that displease Him, destroy us.
God's love is not about our condition, but about the transcendence of His love.
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