Finding Life in Death: Longing for the Beloved
A response blog post.
This is a blog post response to Diana C.’s A Journey Of Inner Transformation. Sorry, it got late. Please make sure you read her post before this one so you make better sense of what I’m saying here.
The story reiterated something I already knew about love. And I would like to react to how and what amazed me about the story in a list of questions. I do so in the hope of creating a moment of reflection for the reader, and to raw in writers from Know thyself heal thyself community.
Before I delve into my reaction to the story, I have to say a word about types of love. I wrote a blog post on love as a force for social justice and in there I mention different types of love from the positive psychology field. For example, Philia love or friendship, Storge or familial love, Agape love which is universal love, Ludus or uncommitted love, Pragma love, self-love, and passionate (romantic) love.
These types of love fail to mention a love between the Creator and the created. between God and man. One that is seen in acts of worship, not out of fear of God but of love for God. One that keeps man searching for meaning like a wayfarer. Agape Love can be of this sort but Agape love is worldly. One that is universal but is attached to the world.
What I would like to think ‘the bird story’ represents is a Creator-created love. One that does not cling to this world or life. It loves life because of the Beloved not because of life itself. It loves life/world because life/world serves a purpose just like it serves a purpose. Agape love, on the other hand, is one that strives for justice and peace in the world for everyone. It stays in this world for this world, like for example charity. Charity is an act of love to bring about economic (or otherwise) justice in this world.
Whereas, the Creator-created love is more personally individual to the lover. It requires the lover, in our case the human being, to love and respect the creation because it is what ‘The Beloved’ created. A love for the creation because of the Creator.
And that's why what the lover longs for is a (re)union with the beloved. In simple words, because this world is not where the Beloved resides. Like the sun in the story.
The amazing part of the story Diana shared was when the bird decides to reach for its friend (the beloved sun) despite the fact it knows it will die! The bird’s longing for union with the beloved makes the bird to willingly lay its life for that cause. The bird does that without any hesitation despite being reminded about it (the tree). So I ask:
What is this that is more important or more sacred than life for the bird?
Is there logic in self-sacrifice for a union with the beloved? Is it beyond logic? Is the bird being unreasonable for doing it?
Is ‘love’ something beyond logic? Or to ask it in another way — Is man’s thinking faculty only the mind? Can ‘love’ reside in the mind? Knowing we always relate love to the heart.
Can it be said that only the world is logical? And life beyond this world is illogical and hence untrue?
Is this world that undeserving to live in for a lonely being/person? like the bird? Can there be another world better than the current one?
Why could not ‘the tree’ be ‘the beloved’ to the bird? Is light more important than shade?
Why is ‘the beloved’ above? Why does the bird lookup?
I am not asking these questions to purposefully look for an answer, but I ask so we, the Know thyself heal thyself writers, can get into a conversation. This is because when things like culture, language, religion, ethnicity, or race are considered, our interpretations for these things vary immensely.
So I would love to hear from Diana C. and writers who are part of Know thyself heal thyself community to discuss these questions.
