The love of another makes growth meaningful, desirable. It magically powers the effort of transformation. Take the sunflower. She pulls away from the wall and reaches for her full height, inwardly impelled in response to the sun’s favor.
I'm no longer fascinated by my expansion for my own sake, any more than my son is interested in doing fractions and word problems. What’s the point? I got my degrees and my awards, and I learned that I am, after all, still pretty small. I’m a temporary rush of membraned energy, a phlegmy speck in an unfathomable universe of coherent complexity. I simply can’t
entertain myself anymore – my self love runs out. I get bored by my mind games, disheartened by my failures and sometimes disillusioned by my grandiosity.
But loved by Another. Well, that’s a different story. I am eager to pour energy in the direction of that one’s favorable vision, and encouraging joy over me. I respond to kindness, to connection, to benevolent leadership, to friendship, to romance. Then, whatever it is, I can do. Oh, yes. As Sara Groves sings, “when you love me, there’s nothing I wouldn’t try. I might even fly.” And if I sit close to my son, and let him hear my joy and steady belief in him, he might even do math.
Still, can love last? When is it self-sustaining? Only the Creator has within Himself the massive resources of intelligence, concern and abundance to impel all creation to reach. Sunflowers, sea serpents and Sonya. Enough to weave stars in slow-burning, galactic flight and still connect my optic nerve to blood-fed brain tissue. Just so I might, one fine, warm evening, make poetry from the distant sky show as He taps his feet.
“for the love of Christ constrains us…” 2 Corinthians 5:14