Loving A Hidden God
THE PAIN OF HUMAN LOVE
The death of a true love can never leave us free from grief if their friendship during this life was our support and our joy. There are some who say that humans should not grieve when they lose a loved one. Well, if they want to ban such grief, let them command that all human love be emptied of every tender feeling. If it is impossible to do this, so too is it impossible for us not to suffer bitter grief when a loved one dies, a loved one who gave so much sweetness to our life. It is indeed because such grief is like a broken heart, like a wound or open sore, that others feel it a duty to offer us the medicine of their sympathy. And even though the heart of one who loves God is more easily and quickly healed, this does not mean that their wounds are any less painful. Indeed, there is no escape from that special misery caused by the death of close friends.
The City of God, 19.8.
It may seem strange to speak about the wonderful experience of love as a cause of pain but so it often is. The highest form of love (the love of friendship) is rare and when it occurs it brings its own share of trials and tribulations. This is an imperfect world and no matter how devoted human lovers want to be, they are hindered by the fact that they too are imperfect. We never achieve completely what we desire.
Such imperfection shows itself in a number of different ways. First, falling head over heels in love with another can lead to some unpleasant consequences. Augustine refers to some of these when he describes his own first "falling in love":
I fell in love and my love was returned and captured me in its warm embrace. But in the midst of my ecstasy I was tied in knots by coils of trouble for I began to be lashed with the cruel, fiery whips of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and quarrels.
Confessions 3.1.1
He was truly and passionately in love but it was a love that tried to consume the beloved, to possess her completely for his own, to deny her any other human love. He was terrified that he would someday lose her. He became angry and irritable when she seemed to be not completely devoted to him. Without doubt he experienced the ecstasy of having a lover, but his imperfection made it impossible for him to be one with her in any reasonable way. As he would sadly observe sometime later:
There is plenty of the wrong sort of love around while very few seem to be able to achieve the right sort of love.
Sermon 368, 3.
Love is certainly painful when our affection is not returned. The "love of our life" may be polite in their rejection but the message is clear:
I do not hate you.
I may even like you.
But I do not love you.
They may be willing to be "affable" but they have no desire to form that intimate "union of hearts" that we desire so passionately.
Sometimes this pain of "absence" comes not from a love that never was but from a love that once was but has now faded. We don't like to admit it, but sometimes it happens: the deep affection that before bound us together has now faded. Augustine himself seems to have believed that his first great love would never cool. Writing later about it, he says:
O God, I fell in love and felt the ecstasy of being loved in return.
Confessions, 3.1
He never imagined that in ten years the great romance would be over, sacrificed on the altar of his ambition.
The fact of the matter is that sometimes love does fade. Oh it may still be a raging fire in our heart, but it has obviously cooled in the heart of our beloved. The object of our affection suddenly becomes the cause of our dejection. Great love affairs are sometimes dissipated by changing places, changing times, and changing lives. Returning to visit an old love after a long absence in distant places, we are excited remembering the days when we had shared hearts, when there seemed to be not enough time to talk about all the things we wanted to talk about, when we delighted in giving and receiving gossip about the big and little events in our daily lives. We look forward to renewing the intimacy, picking up where we left off, sharing each other's life as we once did so long ago. And so we travel to the place where they are. We let them know on their voice-mail that we have arrived and patiently sit by the phone waiting for their excited response. But there are no calls. When we do run across each other by accident, we share only those polite trivialities usually reserved for passing acquaintances. In the past we seemed to share each second of each other's lives but now we ask "What's new?" and respond "Nothing much" and go on about our business. Separateness has made us like distant ships passing in the night, signaling each across the sea with sterile and neutral crackling sounds. They, like us, are still trying to make their way to safe harbors, but now by different paths.
There can be great pain in such experience if we honestly (and foolishly) believed that indeed "absence would make the heart grow fonder." There is even greater foolishness if we try desperately to take up our old place in the lives of old loves who have moved on. Old wines are obnoxious when they become too intrusive, when they impinge too insistently on loves whose tastes have changed over the years. Better by far to shrug one's shoulders and say: "That's Life!" To pine for a former love is not unusual but it makes no sense to agonize forever. It is better by far to let them go and concentrate on the past good times shared, giving thanks for the blessing that allowed the currents of our lives to bring us together for even a brief moment. We still look at them with affection and are happy that our beloved has found happiness with someone else. But it still hurts. We carry the pain of remembering what once was, realizing that it will never be that way again.
Even when our love stays strong over the years, there are still occasions when it can cause great pain. For instance, there are the times when we see that things are going badly for those we love and we can do nothing about it. It is easier to be sick oneself than to watch the growing illness of a loved one. We may pretend that we are distressed only because of their growing weakness but often there is some self-interest at the root of our panic. To be sure we are upset because our friend is not feeling well. When we truly love someone their joy becomes our joy; their pain becomes our pain. They are truly part of us and we share their life. But we cannot share their death and that is why we tremble. If they move on, we shall be left alone. Though we may rejoice that they are moving on to a new life without pain, we cry for ourselves because all we can see in our future is the same old painful life now to be lived without the friend who made it somewhat bearable.
And thus it is that when a dear friend gets sick we worry about what will happen to them and we worry about what will certainly happen to us if they don't recover. From the very beginning of the illness we taste the terrible vacuum, the gap in our life, that will be left by their death. When young lovers promise in marriage a love "till death do us part", they really don't mean it. If their love is deep and true, their love will continue when one dies and bring with it a wrenching pain of loss. This agony of absence is the dark side of that coin of love which brings such ecstasy when our beloved is with us. It may have been heaven to live with them; it certainly is hell to live without them.
There is a terrible pain that comes when you see your beloved hungry or confused or overcome with sorrow, and you are unable to provide the food or direction or consolation that they so desperately need. It is agony for a parent to see their grown children wandering homeless in the uncaring city, unwilling or unable to come back home. It is agony to see a loved one trapped in the frightened confusion of a crippled mind. We cry out "Take my strength; take my health" as we stand by and watch those we love being destroyed. We weep and blame ourselves:
I could not preserve my mother's mind!
I could not make my loved one happy!
I could not stop my kids from destroying themselves!
These are the cries of a love that is helpless to help and it comes from a pain that tears apart our heart. All we can do is stand by and let nature take its course, being present to those we love in their illness, being tolerant of the wayward knowing that we can do little to change them beyond giving them the memory of a loving home and a door that will always open if someday they knock. All we can do is to love them and leave them alone.
It is bad enough when you are not able to help another in their time of misery but it is even worse when you are the cause of the misery. You suddenly realize that you could have eased their hurt if only you had acted more sensibly. Sometimes we are tempted to pursue a love that is already committed to another with little consideration for the effects of such unthinking infatuation on others. God help those we love with such selfish passion! We may do them terrible injury if we forget that the happiness of fulfilled human love involves more than just being united with the beloved. It must also include bring good to them. Human love must begin with doing no harm.
The cruel paradox of human love is that you can always make your loved one weep. You cannot always make them smile. You can hurt your love more deeply unintentionally that can the intended malice of an enemy. You can injure your love more terribly than any stranger can. This is so because love tears down all defenses. It leaves you naked and exposed to the least soothing caress and to the worst wounding blow. Love wounds may be unintentional but this does not prevent them from being deep and piercing with jagged edges. So tender are such wounds that it is sometimes impossible to make amends without inflicting new pain. You try to heal your love's anguish only to withdraw with tear-filled haste when you realize that you are only increasing the damage.
The injury that we sometimes do to our loves is insidious. It may not bring any pain to them at all. Indeed, it may even bring them an ecstatic "high" which turns out to be the fore-runner of a sudden death of the spirit. Afterwards, you may weep seeing the wound you have made in their life, but they may still be unaware of the damage. You know you cannot continue your relationship without destroying them and those others they love but their "hurting" begins only when you try to withdraw your wounding presence. Your involvement in their life is like the deadly intrusion of an arrow into their flesh. Its presence is not as painful to the wounded love as its sudden withdrawal. In much the same way, because of our terrible need for each other we sometimes become piercing swords in each other's lives, twisting and turning in our love one's life, killing each other in our frenzy to be united with them. We are horrified when we finally become conscious of the damage. We withdraw and are torn apart by our loved one's cries of grief at our absence.
There is absolutely nothing to be done but to wait. We cannot return. That would just cause new wounds. And yet our love is still as deep as before. It is true in its own way. But we have shown that we cannot control it or that even in the best of circumstances it disrupts the life of our beloved. All that we can do is to stand back and allow our love to cure the pain through time and through the affection of others who may more properly tend the wounds.
Such painful moments are not uncommon in our relationship with those we love. Parents, for example, someday must let their grown children make their own mistakes. Any further "mothering" or "fathering" will simply put off the day when the new grown adult is able to be independent of the nest and fly to a heaven (or hell) of its own making. Again, it may happen that you begin a love affair that simply will not work. Love may have brought you together but responsibilities drive you apart. At such times a "tough love" is required and, because it is "tough", it is always painful to all concerned. (Commentary on the Letter of John, 7.11.1)
We must be prepared to let go of every human love if it seems to be the right thing to do. Not being willing to let go of a human love is both unrealistic and cruel. Sometimes our love for another is proven by our willingness to separate. Such separations may be painful but rarely will they kill us. We humans are as changeable as a sandy beach. The holes left in our lives by loves who have gone are quickly filled with new sand. Our continuing life sooner or later begins to fill up the gap. Indeed, sometimes the hole fills up despite our valiant efforts keep the walls surrounding our love's absence strong and sturdy. We try to build memorials to a love that is passed so that we can proclaim to the world: "I too once had a great love". Like the Walrus weeping copiously over the poor dead oysters in Alice in Wonderland, we weep over the death of our relationship ignoring the fact that if our love had stayed we would have eaten them alive. We weep copiously over a fictionalized memory of a great love which in truth is only half-remembered.
Such separations "for good cause" may bring temporary anguish but it cannot be compared with the grief that consumes us when a loved one dies. The young Augustine felt such heartache when he lost a dear friend to death. He was simply devastated. He says:
I was torn apart. I kept asking myself: "Why be sad?" But I had no answer. I told myself: "Hope in God!" but I could not because that dear human being, that friend who was now lost to me was more real to me than the vague image of God that I was supposed to hope in. My tears were my only delight now that my friend was gone.
Confessions, 4.4
Many years later he was still affected by the memory of that loss and he questioned God:
Why are tears the only sweetness in the midst of such catastrophes? If you are everywhere, why are you not here when I am so sad?
Confessions, 4.5
Still later he tried to answer the question in one of his sermons:
A parent fears that their child will die before them. A husband or wife fears that their beloved spouse will die first. Can God make all their wishes come true? All we can do is believe that he knows the best order for his creatures to live and die.
Sermon 296, 5.6.
The sorrow we feel when a loved one dies is natural and often deep. (Sermon 172, 1; Letter 263) Some never recover from such tragedy. Perhaps the only consolation comes from words like those written by Augustine to a friend who had just lost her husband:
You must not think that you are alone. You do still have Jesus present in your life. In your tears for your dear husband you must not give up hope of seeing him again. Jesus has promised that when our loved ones die they are not lost to us forever. They just go ahead of us. Someday we shall follow them to the life that is outside. There we shall love them ever more deeply and we shall love them without fear because never, never again shall we be separated.
Letter 92, 1
Our extreme pain of loss comes from loving too much. We are like Augustine still mourning the dead friend of his youth 20 years later and musing:
How crazy it is to love a human being as something more than human, loving them as though they would never die!
Confessions, 4. 6 & 7.
When we do love in this way and our loved one dies we experience the truth of the Old Testament mysterious cry:
I am wounded by love!
Song of Songs, 2.5; 5.8
Only later, and perhaps only in eternity, will we come to understand the equally mysterious comment of Augustine that such wounds of love can be health-giving. (Sermon 298, 2.2)
Still, all things considered, the pain that at times comes from having a passionate and deep love for another human is much less than the dismal pain of those unhappy souls who have never experienced such love. Despite the tribulations that sometimes accompany our passionate affection, we still must try to extend our love to other human beings. Only through such love can we begin to reach out to God. It is our love that draws us into our future and it is our innocent love of other humans that will draw us eventually into the arms of God.