Love and pain are infinitely bound together. This is something I have realised very recently.
The way to love your children is unconditionally. This is completely true, in fact it is a truism. I have parroted that through my life. What about that word – “unconditionally? It has a sting in its tail. It means – literally boundless, infinite. If love has boundaries, then is it really not some type of deal leading back to your own needs. “I will love you until or unless…” What is that? Something glib, a sticking plaster that enables us to believe that we are connected to the beloved, whilst hiding behind our fear and our own ego.
I have recently been confronted by searing pain arising from love. A love that I can’t control. I realise now that I have previously dealt with such grief – such as the loss of my mother, father and elder brother – by closing myself off. This was a defensive reaction I learned when I was sent to boarding school as a child.
But, pain and love are inextricably bound together. They are different sides of a coin. Accepting both is the price of living.
If there are no limits to love and pain – then they are both literally limitless. Infinite. The price of infinite love is the acceptance of the possibility of infinite pain.
Why do this at all? Because unconditional love is the bedrock of authentic living. The prize is worth the price. Though the burden is too much for us in our human frailty. As Elliot says
”human kind cannot bear very much reality” Burnt Norton
Fortunately (I truly believe) we are part of something infinitely loving, which I find in Christ. We do not have to bear the reality of infinite pain in order to express life and love. Love which underpins all existence. It love that is
“the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.” Little Gidding
But then, again at least for me
“All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” Eliot/St Julian of Norwich