Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God, the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. de Chardin Love is a curious thing. Control, exploitation and celebration of it soak human culture. But despite the artifice surrounding it there exists an elusive shimmer when we open ourselves to it; or as Rilke so eloquently expressed, "when we feel, pass off in vapors". It remains the only human quality that links us to the numinous. In recent times there has been much written that the western obsession with romantic love is in truth a deeper longing for a real connection to the spiritual part of ourselves. Americans in particular, have a very adolescent concept that keeps wanting to look to others to provide something that only comes from an intimate relationship with our souls and God. That's more than a term paper--more like a thesis-and not what I wanted to share today. Whatever our capacity to care, to open our hearts, does elevate us beyond ourselves. We do move closer to the soulful place. Frances Bourdillion in his poem Light,describes it this way: "The mind has a thousand eyes,/And the heart but one;/Yet the light of a whole life dies/When it's love is done." Love illuminates.
Oddly enough, in the western world we have only one word to describe this powerful, complex emotion. It is also the word we use to describe our feelings for a movie we liked or the sushi we ate last night. We have used it so freely it has lost its meaningfulness. I find that interesting. In a way, it has handicapped our ability to express some of the most intimate feelings we can experience. We lack the framework to speak and sort them out because we have only one word to cover so many different kinds of important, transformative feelings. There are love's cousins; words such as 'care', 'fond of', 'feel warmly'. But none of those are talking about love. In fact, those words are trying to make clear it isn't love. And while we are talking about these sorts of things, the English language also does not have an intimate, personal pronoun. Everyone can be a you, as can all of us together. Many other languages have a more intimate familiar pronoun that is used among close friends and family members and lovers. Reaching a point in a relationship where they are allowed indicates a new level of intimacy. And many of those same languages also have more than one word to use when expressing this most ineffable of feelings--love. So! If you were Egyptian and were sorting out your feelings for a loved one, you would have the following to consider in deciding what you wished to express:
The first hubb, is simply love in its most general terms. I think you could 'hubb' a steak. Van Gogh has a great one liner: "The best way to know life is to love many things." Personally I believe this could be written on 3x5 cards for mass distribution. It might create world peace.
Ishgq is a love that entwines two people together. This sounds like committed love to me. The image is beautiful isn't it? I think of the love that parents have for their children, families for each other; deep, soulful friendships; long distilled marriages. This reflects the kind of feelings that have grown and deepened through shared experiences. Jane Hirshfield in her poem For What Bind Us wrote: "There are names for what binds us:/strong forces, weak forces.../See how the flesh grows back across a wound/...more strong/than the simple, untested surface before/And when two people have loved each other/see how it is like a /scar between their bodies,/stronger, darker, and proud;/how the black cord makes of them a single fabric/that nothing can tear or mend."
Isn't that something? Read on, there's more.
Next comes shaghaf, a love that nests in the chamber of the heart. That word--nests. How beautiful. This one makes me think of friendship love. Or, the kind of love that fosters acts of kindness and compassion. A gentle, comforting abiding love. Sweet love. I think this is probably some of what you see in the eyes of your dog--but not the cat.
Hayam is love that wanders the earth. This has to be unrequited love. This is the epic movie love story or Heathcliffe -on- the- moors kind of love. The word wander, has a terrible loneliness to it when used in this way. People can wander without every leaving home. This is a searching, longing, restless love. I wonder if this might be also the kind of love that can't settle down. Could this be the person who wants to love, but can't open his or her heart all the way so it can happen?
Tech is love in which you lose yourself. Ah! this has to be young love, the full flush of passion and infatuation where you are definitely not channeling your emotions through your head. Here is where you completely release yourself into the experience--hearts and hands wide open. While the image of teen love comes to mind, this kind of love still knows no age limits. I've seen folks in their 6O's and 7O's in full tech. (Isn't that a great line ? full tech and we are not talking about computers) It's a wondrous thing to witness. This sounds like love full of excitement and expectancy. "Who hasn't waited anxiously before the heart's curtain?" Rilke asked.I have a feeling Rilke's earlier vapor love was probably more about this to.
Walah is love that carries sorrow within it. This one comes with the territory. We will all experience this if we allow ourselves to love. In fact, this is the part of love so many folks want to avoid. It cannot be done. To open ourselves to someone else is to risk being hurt. This is love not only at the graveside, or the hospital bed. This is also walah from a broken heart. This is the love that feels the hurt that is inevitable whenever we are in relationship with another human being. Real walah to me is seamed with tears and tenderness, because the heart actually is tender, it hurts. What I don't know is if this word also conveys the richness and depth of a love which has weathered and been transformed by those feelings. Philippe Jaccottet was thinking along those same lines when he wrote: "Love, like fire, can only reveal its brightness/On the failure and beauty of burnt wood." Maybe one cannot experience ishgq love unless one has felt walah love first. Maybe this is what makes love so nourishing.
Sababah is love that exudes from your pores. I believe this is expressing passionate love. Love so intense your body becomes a transmitter of expression for it. Desire. When did the word lust replace desire? Desire is just as physical but so much more. Lust doesn't seem to involve the heart. Desire is lust with heart. And exudes, isn't that an incredibly expressive word? One would not sababah a steak.
Hawa is love that shares its name with air and falling. This one is the most difficult to express--hence the words air and falling. This may be when we care so openhearted, it is the air we breathe. Perhaps this is the love that happens when two people are so trusting of the other that they allow themselves to be seen as they truly are. Love becomes unconditional. In Thirteen Moons, Charles Frazier's character says: "I held her and it was like falling down a well." I wonder if this could also be descriptive of divine love, for in Hebrew, the word for 'God' is also the word for 'air'. Could this be the love that arrives unsolicited and is available without asking?Falling has a sense of not being able to be stopped. Is this the kind of love that carries grace within it? It exists for us; in spite of us.
And lastly, Gnaram is love that is willing to pay the price. This must be about sacrificial love. The kind of love that compels us to reach for someone we love in order to protect and save them--and not always on a battlefield. This could be honorable love--the love for the greater good which inspires soldiers, firefighters and strangers to come to the rescue. But it also occurred to me this could be transformational love. Could this be love of ourselves in the face of neglect or fear? Love that exists to allow us to become more true to ourselves when all around us there are doubters? "Things don't change because you will them to," Iyana Izlant observed, "but because you open your heart and love yourself into them."
So many choices! So much to wonder over. It makes 'I love you' so much more doesn't it? How wonderful. Could it be the lesson here is love is more than can ever be explained. It is all of these and more. Perhaps experiencing one opens the doors in our hearts to all the others. Perhaps that is what is suppose to happen. There is so much to being human, to living in this world, to being with others. And while it is a mystery that will never be solved, it is the greatest delight of living. Love gives us courage, and brilliance and shine and allows us to be so much more than we imagined. More the way God sees us. Maybe that alone is enough.
The ultimate betrayal of life may well be the failure to love when one has the opportunity to do so.
Morton Kelsey
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