Love Never Dies Again

Love Never Dies Again

“But soon we shall die, and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and then forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”—Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (HarperCollins, 1927), p. 107.

In his Foreword to The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Russell Banks reminds us that at the memorial service in New York for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, British Prime Minister Tony Blair read the closing sentences of Thornton Wilder’s novel. Of course, we hope that those we love will always feel our love throughout eternity. But we also want to tell them about loved ones, such as our parents, siblings, and grandparents, who they may not have known.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, and Wilder, in this novel, both tell us that the best love we have never dies. This is a mystery, but I know in my heart that it is true.

February 12th was my mother’s 104th birthday. We did not always appreciate each other, yet I still feel her love today. My parents died before I was ordained a deacon and before any of our grandchildren were born. Though my parents are not physically here, their love still surrounds us.

All the people in the picture from my parents’ wedding at my grandparents’ home on Third Street are now dead, yet I am so often lifted up by their presence in prayer and love. I feel the love from that home. That dining room table is now in our dining room. There are days when I feel a love whose only source may be the God of love. Sometimes I sense love from specific individuals who have died. 

I think of the group of women with whom I have been reading books once a week for more years than I can count. After a recommendation from one of our members, Lisa Brandom, we read Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey as part of our literary journey. I feel the love of each of these women every time we meet. One friend reminded us that she would keep coming, even if we only read the phone book. 

I now know I will feel their love in my heart for years to come, even after we can no longer see each other.

Love is all we have to offer in this life that will endure. Love is all we will carry with us into the life of the resurrection. Love is the bridge between our earthly home and our life in the resurrection.

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Love Never Dies

Love Never Dies

“Love never dies.”—1 Corinthians 13:8.

I have heard this passage from 1 Corinthians about love many times, but when I heard it recently, directly from our friend Paul and our preacher Michael McCain, I could not hold back the tears. I have told grieving people that their love for and from their loved ones remains and never dies.

I don’t understand it. It is a mystery. I look at pictures of my loved ones who have died, including my brother and my grandparents, and I can feel their love as I send it to them.

Frederick Buechner and Henri Nouwen tell us that our bodies die, but our mutual love somehow returns to God and is preserved for all eternity.

If you are a mystic, you have no difficulty understanding this. However, this may be a challenging concept for those who primarily rely on rational thinking.

Why did this passage move me that Sunday? As I grow older, I am often overwhelmed by how I will miss friends and family when death separates us. Yet I suddenly know in my heart that our love for each other endures. 

Our love for them is ongoing, as is their love for us. We will never be without their love. I believe that, in some mysterious way, this love never dies and is carried into eternity to transform us, others, and the universe.

Today, I give thanks and share with you the love of friends who have died: my younger brother, Jimmy, my parents and grandparents, and the many friends who died last year.

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Rohr:Forgiveness

Rohr: Forgiveness

graham covington

“As long as you can deal with evil by any means other than forgiveness, you will keep projecting, fearing, and attacking it over there, instead of ‘gazing’ on it within and ‘weeping’ over it within yourself and all of us. Forgiveness demands three simultaneous ‘seeings’: I must see God in the other; I must access God in myself; and I must experience God in a new way that is larger than an ‘Enforcer.’”—Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media, 2008), pp. 193-194.

Richard Rohr is teaching us fundamental lessons about forgiveness. It involves seeing the Christ—God in the person we are forgiving—and seeing God or Christ in ourselves. That makes sense. However, Rohr then introduces a third condition. We see that God is not a hall monitor handing out detention slips, checking a list, scrutinizing our every action, and judging whether our neighbors and we behave correctly. 

My experience is that we are called to expand our concept of God as a God of love. How do we do this? First, we place ourselves among others who seem to experience God’s love. Second, we observe how they know how to forgive others.

As we see the Christ in others who know love, the God of love, the Christ in us awakens—and slowly, often very slowly, we begin to see the Christ in those who have harmed us. We may discover that personal tragedies have led them to hurt others. This awareness begins as we pray daily, sometimes hourly, for the person who has harmed us.

We realize we are still carrying a heavy load of resentment, which makes it so challenging to live and walk our journey through life. It is like a cancer, slowly destroying the joy in our lives. That person is still hurting us. They are becoming our higher power, our God. More and more, they are all we can think about.

As we pray daily for that person, they may never change, but my experience is that we do.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/