Monday, December 20, 2004

Love and death

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The lover fingered death like a product in a store. If I were to put this on now, would I be closer to the one I love?

Like any shopper the lover found it difficult to just walk away, because the price seemed so low. Every bargain screams to be bought. Otherwise someone else will buy it, some stranger, and then the good will run out. And you will be left out. The rack seemed so tempting. But oh no. This was not the way to get close to God. Paying for closeness with your own conduct. That was not the way.

How did you get here, get this existence? You were foisted on earth, rolled out of darkness brutally into existence, shaken there out of the dark sack of genetics. You existed, you lived. That meant that you were wedged in conduct -- the conduct flowed out of your body like a form of energy. So God was insisting that you live here and spend your being *here*, use it up for your love's sake, not dare to bury this vibrancy in the ground like the smothered talent in the sacred story. So death was the shortcut you were not allowed to take, lover.

Conduct was not a side-issue but the center of one's love for God. People said that the ones who loved God spent their entire lives trying to learn what God wanted and then do it. If so, you had to be too busy listening for his advice to so much as consider a cheap good like suicide. God is God of the living not the dead.

Even so, you wondered why people who don't much care about God act as better Christians than you ever seem to manage!

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