Here is love

To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one’s self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one’s self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another–and to one’s inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon’s own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.

Found here

The springtime of Lovers has come,
that this dust bowl may become a garden;
the proclamation of heaven has come,
that the bird of the soul may rise in flight.
The sea becomes full of pearls,
the salt marsh becomes sweet as kauthar,
the stone becomes a ruby from the mine,
the body becomes wholly soul.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,^[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly,^[b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Photo: Joanne Gittoes

I’d like to delve deeper into the words Emily and Sam have chosen to hear from our poets and the Christian tradition, to explore further, what is love?

Love is here for the long-haul

it waits; waits with, waits for, waits on, waits through

It’s not in a hurry, there’s a trustfulness about love that time is not our master, that even life and death cannot limit, cannot contain love.

Love, being here for the long-haul, actually enables its own qualities of patience and endurance. Because patience and endurance are possible when we feel secure, and love helps us feel secure, so that, loved and loving, we can wait for the unfolding, the resolving.

None of this is static – we can endure because love is dynamic, it moves like waves, it ebbs and it flows, it grows a garden from a dustbowl: in short, love is alive. With such living, well-nurtured and nurturing love, we can endure seasons of hardship, challenge, and discomfort – and I’m afraid I canpromise you two these will come your way. You have love, and you have already shown yourselves and each other that your love endures with patience: it lasts.

What is love not?

It is without envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, resentment, and selfishness.

Love is here for you, for the other. Paradoxically, love is here for me, too, but not for me first, not for one over another, not for belittling or diminishing. It is – love is – kind. ‘lovingkindness’ is a common English translation of a word in the Hebrew Bible, hesed, and hesed is a quality of relationship that honours, deeply honours, the dignity and worth of the other as bound up with my dignity and worth.

So perhaps it could be truer to say love is here for us. Together. For to be human at all is to be together, in relationship, sharing love.

What does love do?

Love is here with integrity.

There is an honesty about love, a truthfulness that is more than not telling lies. Joy is found in the kind of honesty that makes us vulnerable to each other, shares of our selves with openness, and generosity.

And we might note that one can be ‘generous’, giving much money or property, and still not have love. Rich generosity is a giving of my self, my care, my attention, my time, my presence. Generosity with love is an opening up to others with the risk of pain, cost, rejection. So I can promise you, from the wisdom of our ancestors, that love is risky, my friends. And to love with integrity is to acknowledge that risk and marriage is to live with mutual trust as you take the risk every day.

Love is here to encourage, to share the load, to dream, to live!

Love is – simply and profoundly – here.

Love is our presence, beside, with, each other; for each other,

again, open to receiving from each other.

Love sees you as you are, and as you are becoming; love commits to who you are and who you are becoming

and love sees who I am and who I am becoming, and commits to my being, my growth

Love grows together into our becoming, each of us, and together, as spouses, families, communities

Love turns up – to sit beside me and cry through the sorrow; to stand beside you and rage at injustice; to lie in the dark with me till the fear, the anxiety, subsides; to walk unknown paths with courage and curiosity, companions on the way.

Rumi tells us; the apostle Paul tells us; James Kavanaugh tells us: love is here

For Rumi, love is a proclamation of heaven

For those of us aligned with Christian spirituality, the Divine Themselves are Love, the love that is

in each one of us and between us

beside, before, around us,

waiting for us to open ourselves to each other, and to embrace the fulness of life

Look at us all – here today for love, here with love, affirming, celebrating, supporting this relationship of love as one within these woven ribbons of love through families, friendships, community.

Look.

Bear witness. Love is here. Sure, we are focussed on Sam and Emily’s love for each other today. And how have you brought to mind their acts of care for each other, their truthfulness with each other, their joy and patience and encouraging each other into a deeper fulness of being as I have spoken aloud for them, what love at its best is, our hope and our prayer for them in this binding themselves together.

And, you are here because they also love you and are loved by you.

With love that waits as life unfolds through seasons of study drawing to their completion

with love that dreams for the opportunities that may come for them to fly and explore and grow and learn and give who they are in what communities they find

With love that endures with them challenges and struggles, distances and disagreements

with love that forgives, seeks healing and reconciliation

with love that is presence together

in life that is richer, together

Look at this couple, gathering you together in, for, with love: and celebrate, guard, and keep that love growing and thriving, in all the ways it is present here today.

Amen.