truth

When I was a little girl, I always believed that the summer came twice. It came with a classroom party to celebrate the end of the school year, but it came quietly in a dream the midnight before, too, when I’d rise from my bed, light a small candle, and watch the stars at the window, the silhouette of the huge oak and maple trees partly obscuring my view. Summer came in the quiet dreams of midnight, in the flame of an ordinary white candle, in waiting and wordless silence while the adults prepared for our final day, and in just breathing all that was.

Now life is fragmented across households and states, and yet another centerpiece of our family is sadly missing. This has already been a most difficult year, and I have to admit that I’ll be glad to see it come to an eventual end. Still, for all the grief and uncertainty, for all the adjustments and renewals, it’s been a lifetime of learning packaged not-so-neatly into the form of life as we know it.

I have an appointment a bit later; consequently, I recognize that I may be a bit too introspective for the hour. Still, for better or worse, here I sit, realizing that what’s in my head and heart needs to be written. Not so much because somebody needs to read my thoughts, but because writing them down is like claiming a small victory.

All of this has me thinking about the various forms of love that we experience, and in which we participate.

It seems to me that love is the only wisdom given to us. There’s no other. Love for all that is, love for another, love for self. There’s an honor, regard, awe, and endless gratitude in love. Love isn’t mere sentiment; love chooses, and love acts. Love isn’t selfishness or desire or need. Love doesn’t own another person’s dreams or attempt to dictate them.

Romantic love is intoxicating and sweetest of all, but it's a fleeting thing unless it’s founded on abiding friendship. It may indeed be Narcissus, infatuated with his reflection in the pool, reaching into the water to embrace only weeds and mud.

Friendship creates a space of hospitality and welcome for another, a shelter of acceptance, a place to come and be, a home for the heart where one can always return, where the door will always be opened, the light will be on, the hearth will be warm, and there will be sustenance and a word of care. Friendship is a gift.

One hard thing about a real gift is that it doesn’t imply an obligation on the part of another, even to receive it. Love has to suffer that, too. There’s no other way. One would think that the easier thing would be to cease to love, to decline to extend a gift that may refused, opened or unopened, or ultimately dashed from our hands by mortality itself. But to cease to love is folly. It’s emptiness. It’s all the salt in the Dead Sea that renders those waters poison to drink. Willingness to suffer and to lose is, therefore, a part of love and wisdom, because there can’t be love without risk of loss. Love deals pain as surely as it does joy, but the pain and the pleasure twined together remind us that we’re truly alive.

This is how Emily Dickinson closes a poem about friendship that abides:

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

I love these lines about the undying conversation friends have, and lovers, too, if they’re friends foremost. The wisest people in the world are those who know the value of friendship above all, and who make their friendships, especially those with great promise, a vital life’s work.

Platitudes fall like pattering raindrops on the roofs of our minds, then flow into the gutters we construct to carry them away. Truths, on the other hand, sear us like lightning that illuminates the heart of the storm.

What’s the difference between platitude and truth?

Often, only the living we’ve done and the chances we take.