Elevating Love

We seem sometimes to ignore, or maybe sublimate, deprecating human love in our attempt to accentuate the divine. It suggests that human love is less than it is, that it cannot stand beside God's. We try to keep it at a distance, in a safe and innocuous place, a place it doesn't belong. That is not as it should be.

Love is, and is meant to be, a very human thing. Loving is an aspect of our definition. It reaches out, taking hold of lover and beloved. It is holy and good in itself, a characteristic shared with God and enlivened in our love of someone else.

It may hurt. It may disappoint. It may also fulfill, and it is less than itself if it exists only between God and us, rather than among us all. It has to be person to person, heart to heart. If not, it is not love, not as love could be.