Learning to Love

The change of seasons - especially from Summer to Fall - always brings about some quiet reflection for me. As the days get shorter I find myself thinking about some of the people that used to be in my life. As competitive and ambitious as I can tend to be, it is not the successes or failures from my past that I remember. Rather, I remember the joy and the pain of struggling to know and be known.

The distance of time makes these memories a little easier to contemplate. I know that I am created in God's image and that love is the cornerstone to my life. But I find love difficult. Both to give and receive. I am more aware of my shortcomings in this area today than I have ever been, and so these memories always bring me right into the present. I thank God for my wife who is a patient partner (most of the time) with me in this. She wants much more of me than I can usually deliver - but her persistent acceptance of my limitations and her gentle refusal to be satisfied with them are helping me come to terms with this.

More and more I find myself really believing in (as opposed to just accepting) the Orthodox Christian understanding of marriage - that it is meant for our salvation and not necessarily our pleasure. My generation forgot something our parents knew well. Pleasure is fickle and unreliable - especially as a criterion for a relationship. Love is neither beholden to pleasure or bound by it. Love is something else entirely. It is the life of God poured out into the earth. My prayer is that I learn to love before I die.