The Pristineness of Love

Reading Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy has provided a very important breakthrough for me.

There are two quotes that are relevant:

“求死者得生” 你怎么知道上帝不会给你一条别人都不知道但是在未来会出现的路呢？ 你在任何时候都要听自己内心的声音去做，然后上帝会让你发现一个和你之前的想法完全相反的，但是如果没有你之前的行为就到达不了的一个地方。——诸夏教会

"Those who pray to be dead get to live." How do you know for sure that God will not give you a way that no one knows but will emerge in the future? You have to listen to your inner voice at all times to move forward. Then, only then, will God let you find a place that is completely contrary to your previous thoughts, but that which you can't reach without your previous efforts.” – Cathaysia Church

"根據窩老人家對上帝的了解，上帝的仁慈是落實到每一個人的每一個細節的。仁慈體現為每一個人都會得到他想要的東西，公正體現於每一個人都會得到他應該得到的東西。你了解越多，能力越大，就會覺得在你對世人和世事的裁決中，兼顧兩者的困難越小。世道不公的學說，一般是當事人扭曲敘事體系的建構產物。" ——刘仲敬

"According to my understanding of God, God's mercy permeates in every detail of every individual’s life. Mercy manifests in that everyone will get what he wants, while justice in that everyone will get what he deserves. The deeper your knowledge and the greater your ability, you will feel it less difficult to reconcile these two factors in your judgment of humankind and world affairs. The claim of injustice in the world is in general merely the distorted narrative of the parties implicated." --- William Liu

God Father, now I can call you Father, Abba, again.

I asked to die. You let me live. Again, and again, you’ve forced me to live. 

Your wisdom surpasses my wisdom. Your way of life surpasses my way of life.

There is no need of fear or regret for not getting what I want. There should be no complaint or surprise for getting what I indeed deserve. 

I shall fear not, since God is merciful; I will complain not, since God is righteous.

Over the last two weeks I've read about two bitter-sweet romances: (1) that of Titien and Tobias and her death (http://titien.de/getting-to-know-the-maiers/ and https://weitergen.de/); and then (2) Sheldon and Davy Vanauken's romance and her death in his award-winning book A Severe Mercy (https://www.amazon.com/Severe-Mercy-Sheldon-Vanauken/dp/0060688246). 

Titen and Tobias Maiers

The journeys of these two tragically romantic couples provided me an unobstrcuted insight into what human love means—its breadth, depth, height and strength; and when I am in love, I want nothing less. The taste of such love, although not through direct personal experience but through the intimate account of the ecstasy and agony of the two couples, has both quenched to a certain degree my hunger and thirst for a romantic relationship but also has left me firmly and proudly intolerant of anything lesser. 

I would rather be single since nothing less than such love will satisfy me.

But, will THAT satisfy me?

For, increasingly I find that love, pagan love, however profound and perfect, like the one between Van and Davy, is not enough. 

Indeed, reading about the love between them, I was inspired by their aspirations, efforts, impressed by their cultivated and pure minds, moved by their loss and sorrows and to be honest, more than once smitten with jealousy of their opportunities and resources, to have accomplished such great love and experienced those superb moments of “inloveness”. 

I couldn’t help but question – was it all enough? Wasn’t that great love, even love of life, unconditional and undying, exlusive and all inclusive, still too limited, too small, too superficial?

This is significant question, all the more so as it comes from someone who had pursued that type of love as the highest goal of her life and had lamented the absence of it, or even any decent love, as the single most painful regret of her life.

What if she had got it? Like Sheldon and Davy? Would it suffice? 

It had never been a question to her. You don’t ask anyone starving to death to consider if she really needed some nutrition. 

Now that it seems she had survived with starvation over half of her life and, through this surrogate feast on love, is given a reprieve, she suddenly paused and wondered if this love would satisfy her if it were hers. 

The answer, very surprisingly, is likely a regretful no.

What a realization this is!

Isn’t this confirming yet again the supreme wisdom and mysterious mercy of the Lord? 

Is not such pagan love—strong and enduring, pure and beautiful, surpassing and encompassing — also self-absorbing, inward looking and futile? Is it not a fact that the lovers had decided not to have children, all in the name of their love and for the sake of their love? Isn't the fact that a family never came out of their love one of the most tangible forms of that sort of love's barrenness? 

I sincerely hope that saying that is not the distorted narrative of someone who has been denied the grape and hence forth dwells on its alleged sourness. 

I am most certainly not trying to smear the Vanaukens as selfish people, which they clearly were not, either in the before or after their conversion.

My criticism is only of the love, not the lovers. The Vanaukens were among the greatest lovers. 

Pagan love, by nature, could only achieve its highest and purest form and maintain it by being narrow-minded. The Shining Barrier, by being a barrier against all threats and corruption to the love that’s enshrined in the centre of it, has also necessarily excluded what gives the love its value and meaning, which, as now I am beginning to see, ishould be like a vaccine, a shield, and ultimately a weapon to fight ugliness, pain and death. Instead, pagan love seems to have been quite self-complacent, concerned and contented with nothing but its own longevity, pristineness and immortality. Its emphasis of purity becomes more out of fear than pride. It couldn’t stand or withstand the test of raising children, their own children. The union of a woman and a man for the sake of multiplication and continuity of humankind became the very cause of their sterility. 

Well, it was not enough for Davy, who did get such a perfect love of life. 

The really perfect love should be like their ship, the Grey Goose, holding them together and takes them to a great destination, and along the way, helping those who are shipwrecked and drowning.

I wonder how much Davy owed her earlier and “easier” conversion to the Lord to certain void and loss in her life —of her being a married middle-aged woman without children, of her having, as a teenage girl, given birth to a daughter out of wedlock whom she gave up for adoption and never ever saw again. Much as the husband and wife vowed and vied to share all thoughts, feelings and experiences perfectly equally, that loss and void could not be felt or experienced in the same way, just as the sickness and death of Davy, though tragic and terrible for both, was primiarily a trial and tribulation for Van, whose conversion was only solidified after his bereavement. 

So, would I have been better off if I had been given a perfect human love at the cost of the divine love, if indeed that was the choice? 

The answer is a relieved no, and an increasingly grateful no.

Thank you, God, for giving me what I really want and what I don’t even deserve.

A severe mercy indeed.