How Do I Give Myself to Love?
(and why this is the only question that matters)
“To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words…the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament silence, but what it conceals is inscrutable. Its silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away.” — Abraham Heschel
Beyond the place of words and symbols, beyond the place of right and wrong, and even of knowledge, there is a field where I meet with God.
I would tell you its name, but it is nameless. I have no name there either, nor does God. It is a place where names cannot survive, because names create separation, and there is no separation there. It is a place greater than thought, greater than understanding, greater than any created thing.
That’s where I am. That’s where you are, too.
What we call “Reality” is but a veil that God pulls over our eyes for a time to teach us the supremacy of love. But aside from love, little of it is real, and nearly none of it will last.
Once we see that this is so, the question of life is no longer how do I “create wealth” or “success in business” or “build a secure future” or “get famous” or “powerful” or even “find happiness.” Rather, it becomes simple:
How do I give myself to Love?
That is the only question that matters. For as Jesus showed us through the cross and resurrection, a love that gives itself for others — not out of need but out of overflow — is the narrow road that leads to life.
It is this love — for which love is too small a word — that saturates that ineffable field beyond the border where words can go. Love is the radiance of that place, its aroma, the warm hearth at the center of its belonging that all of us crave. And by every kind act, however small, we put each other back on its scent. And by every gesture of mercy, and every act of forgiveness, we carry each other one step closer to our true shared home.
