Vulnerability and guarding one's heart. These two seemingly contradictory ideas have been on my mind a lot for the past couple of weeks, and I am going to attempt to explain my confusion/conclusions.
There are two issues here.
(1)Augustine says what I think no theologian can deny: True happiness can only be found in the Lord. Lewis agrees.
(2)But, there is a twinge of something else I don't like. "Misery." Yes, it makes perfect sense to avoid misery, but I don't think that's what ought to drive us. Love isn't meant for God alone. Love is made to be God's first, and above all things, but let us not forget the Lord's words in Mark:
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What Lewis sees merely a twinge of in Augustine I see rampant among the Christian world, especially, if I may be so bold as to say, in the actions and lives of the men of Faith that I, and my fellow women, attempt to inspire. Love paralyzes. Love's cost is high. Its risk mean looking like a fool. It means that we might love an individual, with the love of affection, friendship, eros, or charity, and it might not be returned, or not returned with the same intensity. Perhaps, for some, there is the fear that we cannot love enough and will some how damage others because our love does not yet match their intensity.
To all the fears, the struggle, the paralyzing inaction of our hearts, I take courage in the following words of Lewis' response to Augustine's second assertion:
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung out and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell" (121).
What a bold speech! What an interesting view. Now I don't think Lewis is asking us to put ourselves in situations of great torture for torture's sake, but I think he is asking, as Christ asked and did, to suffer and die (to ourselves, in our case), for Love's sake.
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Now, how can this concept work along with the idea of guarding one's heart? People tell me all the time to make sure I, and others, are guarding my heart. But, how can this be consistent with what Lewis, and Christ himself teach?
I think there has been a lot of misunderstanding on my part about what it means to guard my heart. Loving without having that love returned has been such a natural part of my life for the past, uh, ten or so years. I am accustomed to the pains and sufferings of love's awkward preferences in my life. A bizarre deficit of love spending and receiving feels so natural I'm not sure what I'd do if I suddenly experienced a surplus. So, why should I guard my heart if, one, it doesn't hurt (that bad) and, two, the commands of being a Christian call me to love without counting the costs?
First, I think it's important to understand what love really is. The clearest understanding of love I gained comes from the Italian phrase Ti voglio bene commonly translated, "I love you." However, the phrase more literally means, "I wish you good," or, "I want what is good for you." This isn't the sort of "love" that I have claimed as I indulged others and inflated their egos. If I loved as I ought, I would be guarding many more hearts than the one who is the object of my love--yours, mine, and all those who we should love in the future.
Overall, I think the phrase, "guarding one's heart," is completely counter-Christian. I'd like to replace it with something else like, "Responsible loving" or Loving ones neighbor and oneself.
Finally, Lewis concludes, and so must I, "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it" (122).
6 comments:
Great post! I am reading the book No Man is an Island, by Thomas Merton. In the first chapter he says a lot about love that goes along with what you've read. In particular, here's a quote that I thought of when you mentioned loving responsibly:
"Now there is a spiritual selfishness which even poisons the act of giving to another. Spiritual goods are greater than material, and it is possible for me to love selfishly in the very act of depriving myself of material things for the benefit of another. If my gift is intended to bind him to me, to put him under an obligation, to exercise a kind of hidden moral tyranny over his soul, then in loving him I am really loving myself."
This reminds me of a tendency, at least in my life, that when I fall in love I have a desire to bind my beloved to myself in a way that I wish my beloved would only be happy with me, and without me I wish my beloved would be unhappy. Ultimately that is not wishing the good for another. It's only me loving myself.
Merton also says, "When we love ourselves wrongly we hate ourselves."
I love that (second) Lewis quote. I can easily let myself love (almost)fully (perhaps too easily) only to be heartbroken when its not returned as I hoped it would be. In the past i would get so fed up with trying to be a loving person, and then getting walked all over, that the idea of guarding my heart sounded like a really great idea! Even if you understand what love is supposed to be, it will never be easy to live it.
This post also made me think of something I read recently. (From the Introduction to the Devout life):
O YE virgins, I have but a word to say to you. If you look to married life in this life, guard your first love jealously for your husband. It seems to me a miserable fraud to give a husband a worn-out heart, whose love has been frittered away and despoiled of its first bloom instead of a true, whole-hearted love.
After trying to be a love-filled Christian, and yes, getting hurt over and over, I read this and wondered if maybe I would have a “worn-out heart”. So yes, love responsibly! (Now if that doesn’t sound impossible, I’m not sure what would)
We are beings created for love: both to be loved, and to love. To do any less would not be fulfilling the purpose for which we were created, and that means that sometimes it is going to be one-sided.
It is so easy to get frustrated with that. Giving, and giving, and giving, we get nothing back. And so we get frustrated, give up, and speak of "guarding our hearts" to protect ourselves from that hurt.
But then I consider the nature of the love that God has for us, and how we can NEVER fully love him to the extent that he deserves, and how essentially, God GIVES, and GIVES, and GIVES, and we never return it, nor are we capable of doing so. But that doesn't mean that he gives up on us, nor does it mean that we stop loving God to the capacity that we do possess.
If God can love somebody despite the lack of requital, then why shouldn't I?
Also, an interesting view of this subject from Ben Harper that played on my iTunes while I was commenting:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/benharper/walkaway.html
It is interesting to see what he is saying in context of your post... I am still trying to see how they meet each other.
I responsibly love this post, Ceec.
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