Love you!

Lent Book Club: 16th March 2022

Oh good, Elizabeth Barrett Browing is one of my favourite poets and Sonnet 14 is a lovely poem. Shakespeare similarly says, “Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds”. (Sonnet 116)

Love is good in and of itself. It does not need some other justification. If it relies on a particular trait, someone’s beautiful eyes perhaps, it will change as that characteristic changes. C. S.Lewis identifies four types of love: unconditional charity, erotic love, friendship and affection (I oversimplify here). God’s love, I suppose, is a mixture of each in the right amount*. (If you wonder about including erotic love, may I suggest taking a look at the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. Makes me blush just to mention it. You can find it just before the book of the prophet Isaiah).

Similar sentiment here**:

Why have I put this blast from the past here? Because, when I first glanced at today’s poem this was the earworm that accompanied me thereafter. Hence I wanted to share my joy with you. 😉

Thoughts, feelings, desire and actions are all part of the divine love we are invited to join and share. It is reliable and unchanging. We can aspire to such love but only God can comprehensively embrace it. Bishop Harries points out that it is a miracle which transcends selfish and grasping ego. It is supreme grace (p50).

To praphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning: God loves us for loves sake, so that we may love on though the eternity of love.

This year #LentBookClub are reading “Hearing God in Poetry. Fifty poems for Lent and Easter” by Richard Harries published by SPCK. In this book Bishop Harries introduces us to a number of poets and poems. Some may be familiar, some are old and some are new. You may follow the # on Twitter or find us on Facebook.

*I was going to write “each in perfect harmonic proportion” but that sounded a bit pretentious even though it is what I meant.

**It’s the general sentiment I’m referring to. Please don’t hold me to every word of this song.