Caritas

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." -James Baldwin

Yet love's force is not all liberation.

It's power is not just the power to remove, but to bind.

It is a forged chain of labor that spans both the quiet & the troubled days, and yet it is more.

Love can be facade, or thrive in a cage of smoke & mirrors.

It is an ocean where no ship makes harbor; it is a desert where all thirst and all falter; it is a starless night that somehow still glitters strange beauty, and it is a heavy burden that distinguishes not hours from years, and must be carried from the graveside.

Our love scrapes and scrapes, yet leaves beneath the dull ache of unfufillment - we have not got past ourselves, deep into the inner circles of the heart.

Human love is a helpless sort of thing, confused with drama and petulent, like a child trying to learn to read.

Love takes off masks and replaces them.

Love is a labyrinth that leads infrequently to the sun.

It is a shadow-grail to be sought after, seldom found and only fully realized at death.

King David, a man with depth of heart, says to the LORD alone, "Your love is better than life."

I too praise divine love, and long to dwell umasked & real within the shelter of that mystery.