Most
of my generation were reproved as children for saying that we “loved”
strawberries, and some people take a pride in the fact that English has the two
verbs love and like while French has to get on with aimer for both. But French has a good many other languages on its
side. Indeed it very often has actual English usage on its side too. Nearly all
speakers, however pedantic or however pious, talk everyday about “loving” a
food, a game, or a pursuit. And in fact there is a continuity between our
elementary likings for things and our loves for people. Since “the highest does
not stand without the lowest” we had better begin at the bottom, with mere
likings; and since to “like” anything means to take some sort of pleasure in it,
we must begin with pleasure.
*
The
typical example of Gift-love would be that love which moves a man to work and
plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without
sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened child
to its mother’s arms.
There
was no doubt which was more like Love Himself. Divine Love is Gift-Love. The
Father gives all He is and has to the Son.
*
We
are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We
need others physically, emotionally, intellectualy; we need them if we are to
know anything, even ourselves.
*
Secondly,
we must be cautious about calling Need-love “mere selfishness”. Mere is always a dangerous word. No
doubt Need-love, like all our impulses, can be selfishly indulged. A tyrannous
and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary
life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother;
nor an adult who turns to his fellow
“for company”. Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not
usually the most selfless. Where Need-love is felt there my be reasons for denying or totally mortifying
it; but not to feel it is in general the mark of the cold egoist. Since we do
in reality need one another (“it is not good for man to be alone”), then the
failure of this need to appear as Need-love in consciousness – in other words,
the illusory feeling that it is good
for us to be alone – is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a
bad medical symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because
men do really need food.
*
...
crying out to Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up
things that are still dangling loose.
*
It
would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast
“I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.”
*
He
addresses our Need-love: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are
heavy-laden”, or, in the Old Testament, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill
it.”
*
Man
approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can
be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness
and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?
*
God
has impressed some sort of likeness to Himself, I suppose, in all that He has
made. Space and time, in their own fashion, mirror His greatness; all life, His
fecundity; animal life, His activity. Man has a more important likeness than
these by being rational. Angels, we believe, have likenesses which Man lacks:
immortality and intuitive knowledge.
*
Our
Gift-loves are really God-like; and among our Gift-loves those are most
God-like which are most boundless and unwearied in giving. All the things the
poets say about them are true. Their joy, their energy, their patience, their
readiness to forgive, their desire for the good of the beloved – all this is a
real and all but adorable image of the Divine life. In its presence we are
right to thank God “who has given such power to men.” We may say, quite truly
and in an intelligible sense, that those who love greatly are “near “ to God.
*
We
may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God.
Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and
also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do
not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated
forms of hatred.
C.
S. Lewis
The
Four Loves
1958
And
I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For
I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
...
I
hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor
do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why
should I wish to see God better than this day?
I
see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In
the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I
find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s
name,
And
leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoever I go,
Others
will punctually come for ever and ever.
Walt
Whitman
Song
of Myself
1892
Lee Chang-dong
Poetry
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