In the Beginning God

3 On Love

We all know what being alone physically leads to, for the body is perverse when left to entertain us physically.  A mind alone fights thoughtlessness and struggles with everything in it to find something to think about.  It is the same with a heart, the seat of emotion.   A soul alone then fights aloneness, the mind wants to think, the heart to feel.  The key to being alone then is to triumph over one’s seemingly single existence. 

At a younger and younger age it would seem people are discovering what it is to play physically.  First of course we learn to play with the body, and I need not go into that I don’t think.  Few people can play with their body before they encounter things to do that though entertaining wind up causing distress because of directives imposed upon the process that serve an entire gambit of controversy that so much of the time need not be.  However, triumphing over personal dissatisfaction with the alone process makes it mandatory that some pursuit higher than sexual pleasure or the lack thereof, or worse the opposite thereof be accomplished.  One must sooner or later turn to playing with the physical world other than the body itself.

Music, video, and an increasingly numerous amount of things to do alone in a physical environment exist.  From solitary games, solitaire and dice games, to electronic games and other solitary pursuits like reading, writing, artistic and craft making pursuits even solitary Web activities are ways to entertain and enlighten the self alone seem unlimited besides TV and videos, and music or both.  It seems that modernly we have been inundated with things to occupy ourselves when alone.  But no matter what we do it is only entertainment, and we wind up feeling down and alone, or at least alone and therefore lonely.

We long to be social.  We long for company, and we incorporate people in our previously alone activities which is silly.  It helps but it only entertains, and we wind up alone together.  It is rather like inviting someone to join in your misery and eventually so many of us wind up alone to themselves no matter what they do.  But ironically, the key to not being alone is not to pursue just being with others but enjoying them and ourselves being with each other.  The ultimate capacity of the human heart is for love.

Physically, it would seem than solitary sex is not love, but winds up somewhere akin to perverseness and its consequent guilt.  Similarly shared sex is potentially the same activity just incorporating another lone body to play with and the satisfying of oneself with and in the presence of another which is of course more socially acceptable, and even more fun than sex alone in most cases.  But as most couples find, a board game, a card game, even listening to music, or watching a movie or videos, but sharing something together becomes even more enjoyable than sharing one’s own sexuality when alone together.  I am afraid that many people find ways then to entertain themselves in our entertainment crazed environment and accept their loneliness and separateness even in a marital relationship it would appear.  But there is so much more to life than simply sharing one’s aloneness with others.

I should think that to be loved.  To actively participate in the sharing of life’s difficulties and unpleasantness as well as to entertain and to delight each other is a higher and therefore more satisfying event in a person’s life.  To have joy after meeting a person is often considered a sign one is in love.  But too many people consider mere sexual longing love.  If that’s the case even dogs can and do fall in love. 

I am not talking about erotic longings here.  I am talking about enjoying the presence of another in one’s whole life; their physical life by all means if that is important to them, but also their thought lives and more importantly their spiritual lives.  The sharing of one’s identity with another and a sense of belonging willingly to another’s self-definition spiritually, to me that is love.  For with it comes not just a happy feeling, or even an entertained feeling, but the sense of having been completed like the trite image of a jagged coin fitting together, and not just a desire for it to be either but the actual fulfilment of it.

When one accomplishes this with God the ultimate love relationship would take place.  And here, I too have failed to a larger extent than I would like.  I have definite strong feelings for God.  I want to be completed by him and to complete my relationship with him, but I do not always love God.  Sadly I am dysfunctional spiritually to the degree I do not love God with my entire mind, heart and body; my entire being.  I am continually drawn away by selfish pursuits, physical pursuits, emotional desires, and even a stupid desire to be like God spiritually to the point I have an unshared identity with him.  He forgives me, so often it is a miracle in itself.  But I find a need to forgive God for being who he is.  And that is wrong.  It may not be, but it is at least akin to being ashamed of him.  There is a big part of me that wants, even seems to need to achieve some sort of separateness from him; some aloofness if you will that I so readily feel with so many people if not all the people I know.  And to the degree I accomplish it I feel terrible, unloving, and unkind.  And selfishly I too often want to satiate myself with the many things God never made and wants no part of.  How else am I to drive him away?  But how could I be that horrible to anyone especially God?  May he yet forgive me one last time, again?  How else can I live without this terrible longing for him, and how else am I to survive spiritually with joy, the joy that comes with being loved, yes, but the indestructible joy that comes with loving and being loved by the Lord.