spirit of love

There breathes not a breath of the summer air

But the spirit of love is moving there;

Not a trembling leaf on the shadowy tree,

Flutters with hundreds in harmony,

But that spirit can part its tone from the rest,

And read the life in its beetle's breast.

When the sunshiny butterflies come and go,

Like flowers paying visits to and fro,

Not a single wave of their fanning wings

Is unfelt by the spirit that feeleth all things.

The long-mantled moths that sleep at noon

And rove in the light of the gentler moon;

And the myriad gnats that dance like a wall,

Or a moving column that will not fall;

And the dragon-flies that go burning by,

Shot like a glance from a seeking eye—

There is one being that loves them all:

Not a fly in a spider's web can fall

But he cares for the spider, and cares for the fly;

He cares for you, whether you laugh or cry,

Cares whether your mother smile or sigh.

How he cares for so many, I do not know,

But it would be too strange if he did not so—

Dreadful and dreary for even a fly:

So I cannot wait for the how and why,

But believe that all things are gathered and nursed

In the love of him whose love went first

And made this world—like a huge great nest

For a hen to sit on with feathery breast.

George MacDonald

Love Never Disappears

St. Augustine

Love never disappears for death is a non-event.
I have merely retired to the room next door.
You and I are the same; what we were for each other, we still are.
Speak to me as you always have, do not use a different tone, do not be sad.
Continue to laugh at what made us laugh.
Smile and think of me.
Life means what it has always meant.
The link is not severed.
Why should I be out of your soul if I am out of your sight?
I will wait for you; I am not here, but just on the other side of this path.
You see, all is well.
 

Misery

"Now the way most people do when they see anything very miserable is to turn away from the sight, and try to forget it.  But Diamond began as usual to try to destroy the misery.  The little boy was just as much one of God's messengers as if he had been an angel with a flaming sword, going out to fight the devil.  The devil he had to fight just then was Misery. And the way he fought him was the very best.  Like a wise soldier, he attacked him first in his weakest point--that was the baby; for Misery can never get such a hold of a baby as of a grown person.  Diamond was knowing in babies, and he knew he could do something to make the baby, happy; for although he had only known one baby as yet, and although not one baby is the same as another, yet they are so very much alike in some things, and he knew that one baby so thoroughly, that he had good reason to believe he could do something for any other.  I have known people who would have begun to fight the devil I a very different and a very stupid way.  They would have begun by scolding the idiotic cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meat shabby little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the wailing baby.  But Diamond had him out of the cradle in a moment, set him up on his knee, and told him to look at the light.  Now all the light there're was came only from a lamp in the yard, and it was a very dingy and yellow light, for the glass of the lamp was dirty, and the gas was bad; but the light that came from it was notwithstanding, as certainly light as if it had come from the sun itself, and the baby knew that, and smiled to it; and although it was indeed a wretched room which that lamp lighted--so dreary, and dirt, and empty, and hopeless!--there in the middle of it sat Diamond on a stool, smiling to the baby, and the baby on his knees smiling to the lamp.  The father of him sat staring at nothing, neither asleep nor awake, not quite lost in stupidity either, for through it all he was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why.  It was that he had struck his wife.  He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding.  And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good.  For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.  On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St. John it was perfect blessedness.

By and by he became aware that there was a voice of singing in the room.  This, of course, was the voice of Diamond singing to the baby--song after song."

George MacDonald / At the Back of the North Wind.

The Wildness of God

What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.

Madeleine L'Engle