I Must Know God through Love

Since eternity I have first felt it and then wondered about it.

Then I formed words.

What I heard from others that touched a small spot in me—that illuminated  something I recognized as me.

I repeated and rearranged words.

I groped in dim light to say those rearranged words to my secret self. Then I tried to share them with those I hungered for.

I shared words that had caused ripples I had felt in my bones. I wanted them to cause ripples in others. Sometimes they did. More often they did not.

The words never settled peacefully, but I kept speaking and then writing. Writing and speaking.

Words in ink seemed more ageless and borderless.

Yet they never settled peacefully.

What is this that I am looking for?

What is this that keeps finding me? And touching me?

How will I remember the faithful feeling? How will I know when I am feeling it again?
How will I know when it is true?

What is it made of?

What claim does it have on me?

And I?

What or who am I that my bones, my breath, my everything moves when this power is near?

I stutter.

I speak and then pause. The more I read and write and speak the words the more they go over and through and fade. They cannot linger or settle.

One day they spark something and I am more alive. I am more me.

The next I feel little. The next I feel nothing.

I cannot know by words.

But love is something other than words. Love bursts beyond words.

Love has settled in peace in these two mourning doves.

They do not have to fumble with thoughts or concepts or words.

They never experiment, rehearse, repeat, or  rearrange words.

There is one thing inside them that owns them—that is them.

They flit from post to railing to branch…together.

They speak wordlessly to each other. They nuzzle. They must be near.

From eternity I have known God the way all things know God--in love.

I can know God no other way.

And it is so with us.

The delicious longing in the Song of Songs. The poetry of Rumi.

All of us, no matter what species, what race, what political party—we know the color of love.

We know the smell of it. We know the feel of it on and in our bodies—and we and our bodies are the same.

And we desire it to carry us beyond the torture of the ambiguity of our words to the certainty of its embrace.

We want love—we want God—to settle peacefully within us.