Monday, February 3, 2014

Love

Love is action. Love is always directed in the interest of the loved one. Possibly no subject has been the source of more literature or conjecture since the beginning of civilization as love. Most commonly read in wedding ceremonies St. Paul defines love as "Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist in its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes in all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." Now that is very nice and in fact despite its use in weddings I am of the opinion that Paul, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, directed it to the church and to relationships as an admonition. Much better served as a paean to marriage, stirring and positive, is the sonnet 116 of William Shakespeare.
                                   "Let me not to the marriage of true minds
                                    Admit impediments. Love is not love
                                     Which alters when it alteration finds,
                                     Or bends with the remover to remove:
                                      O,no! It is an ever fixed mark,
                                       That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
                                        It is the star to every wandering bark,
                                         Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
                                           Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
                                            Within his bending sickle's compass come;
                                              Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
                                               But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
                                             
                                               If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
                                               I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd."

The poetry of both, give voice to love is action and to love which seeks to fill the interest of the loved one. We only know it by its fruits.