Yesterday I wrote about the durable, faithful Love of God. It would be way too easy to sentimentalise the love of God, unintentionally reduce it to indulgent complacency, describe it with fatal inaccuracy as if it were a celestial flavour of niceness, or mistake it for an anodyne affection lacking the pain of passionate longing. Some of the greatest theology ever written struggles and strains within the limits of meaning to say what the love of God is, or is not. It's an area where I don't want to be dogmatic, but often end up being so! Some of the greatest religious poetry has also explored the ranges of of far distant meaning, or ransacked all the available semantic domains, or has continuously conceived conceited concepts….
(I know, just let my own wee conceit pass without comment:)
So when I discover a few lines of prose or poetry that backs up my own dogmatic tendencies, or subverts my equally dogmatic certainties, I copy it, think about it, interrogate it, – even let it interrogate me. One such attempted definition has been in my commonplace book ever since I read it in a poetry anthology years ago. Over the years it has broken down into the diverse butv fertile compost out of which grows my theological life and thought. I share it not because it is the last word, but because it is at least the first word.
Love ever gives, forgive, outlives,
And ever stands with open hands.
And while it lives, it gives.
For this is love's prerogative:
To give – and give – and give.
John Oxenham
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